Jamie-Lynn Sigler Opens Up About How Her Kids Reacted to Her Multiple Sclerosis
Mob Town’s Jamie-Lynn Sigler was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2002, and she recently opened up to Today about her journey as she copes with her symptoms, raises her kids, and continues to grow her successful acting career.
“I’m doing very well,” Sigler told Today. I’ve lived with it for 18 years and so much of it was focused on the physical part of the journey and the way it affects me and obviously it still does today, but now it’s been more [of] paying attention to the emotional part. I don’t think people realize emotionally how much a chronic illness can affect you.”
Sigler was diagnosed with MS when she was 21 after experiencing numbness, tingling, and heaviness in her legs.
Multiple sclerosis is a disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. It damages the myelin sheath (the material that protects your nerve cells), which messes up the communication between your brain and body, per the U.S. National Library of Medicine. This results in vision problems, muscular weakness, balance and coordination issues, numbness, and memory trouble.
Nearly 1 million U.S. adults are living with MS, and while there is no cure, the disease can be managed with medications and treatments like steroids, chemotherapy, and speech therapy.
Sigler’s MS diagnosis rocked her world—and her family’s. “MS—any chronic illness, really—becomes your whole family’s disease, not just your own,” she wrote in an essay for Shondaland.com.
She was especially worried about how it would impact her two young boys, Beau and Kyle. “A million thoughts ran through my head. What if he runs off and I can’t chase him one day?” Sigler recalled thinking when her six-year-old son Beau was born. “What if I can’t carry him up and down the stairs? What if he won’t want to play with me because I can’t be the ‘fun mom’ who runs on the beach with him, or chases him around the house?”
A post shared by Jamie Lynn Sigler (@jamielynnsigler) on Mar 2, 2019 at 9:20am PST
But the Sopranos star says family has been nothing but supportive. Though Kyle, who is nearly 2 years old, is too young to understand his mom’s condition, Sigler told Today that Beau “totally gets it.”
“Sometimes he asks questions, but you know, my kids make me feel like a superhero. They don’t know any different, I’m the only mommy that they know,” she said. “He understands if I say I need to sit down or let’s just do some Leggos, I need to hang out. He never complains. I think I’m the only one who overanalyzes or feels guilty that I can’t do things.”
Despite the occasional feelings of “not being enough,” Sigler said that her “two little boys give me all the love and reassurance I’ll ever need.”
“They don’t ask why I move the way I do, why I need help up stairs sometimes or why Daddy rubs my legs a lot,” she wrote in the essay. “They have shown me that I don’t need anything, good or bad, working or not, disease or no disease, to be deserving of love. This experience of motherhood has given me the confidence I needed to get back to that old Jamie.”
A post shared by Jamie Lynn Sigler (@jamielynnsigler) on Dec 1, 2018 at 6:57am PST
Sigler said that she no longer feels like a victim of MS. “It’s given me a lot,” she told Today. “One of the things it’s really given me, one of the beautiful lessons is realizing how kind people are. It’s allowed me to connect with people.”
“It’s very hard for me to ask for help, but I’ve realized people like to feel needed, they like to be of service and helpful,” she said. “It’s allowed me to have some beautiful interactions and I just am appreciative of that.”
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