At the time, almost every account described the appearance through the MS diagnosis. That was reasonable because it was the information Applegate and the public had. The standing ovation became a symbol of her life “with MS.”
The 2026 revelation complicates the label but not the moment. Viewers were applauding the visible effort required for her to be there, the work she had given television, and the honesty with which she had discussed illness. None of those facts depends on the final diagnosis.
It would be cruel to revisit the clip as though the emotion was based on a falsehood. Medicine had given Applegate one explanation; she and everyone else operated on it. The later correction shows the limits of medical certainty, not a failure of character.
It also reveals something about viral storytelling. Social media often wants a moment to carry one clear meaning. The Emmy clip was filed under bravery, disability, and comeback. Two years later, it belongs to a more complex category: living publicly with real disability while the medical explanation remains unsettled.
How Multiple Sclerosis Is Diagnosed
Multiple sclerosis is a disease involving the central nervous system. In MS, immune activity damages myelin, the protective material around nerve fibers, and can also injure the nerve fibers themselves. Because the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves influence many functions, symptoms can vary widely.
Possible symptoms include vision problems, numbness, weakness, balance difficulties, fatigue, pain, bladder or bowel changes, cognitive problems, muscle stiffness, and tremor. That range is one reason MS can be difficult to diagnose: many of the individual symptoms are not unique to it.
There is no single simple test that always produces a yes-or-no answer. Clinicians combine several kinds of information. They take a detailed history, looking at what happened, when it happened, how long symptoms lasted, and whether problems appeared as separate attacks or progressed over time. A neurological examination evaluates strength, sensation, coordination, reflexes, vision, and other functions.
MRI scans can show lesions in the brain or spinal cord. But the existence of white-matter lesions does not automatically prove MS. Lesions may appear for other reasons, including migraine, vascular conditions, aging, inflammatory diseases, or other neurological disorders. Their location, shape, pattern, and behavior over time matter.
Doctors may examine spinal fluid for immune markers and order blood tests to exclude conditions that can imitate MS. They also consider whether there is evidence that disease activity occurred in different parts of the central nervous system and at different times—a concept central to modern diagnostic criteria.
This is a process of pattern recognition and exclusion, not the reading of one definitive result. Skilled clinicians can still disagree when symptoms and imaging do not form a classic pattern.
That uncertainty does not mean MS is imaginary or that diagnosis is guesswork. It means medicine is applying structured criteria to a complex biological condition for which there is not yet one perfectly specific marker. The criteria have improved, imaging has improved, and specialist experience matters. Errors can nevertheless occur.
How an MS Misdiagnosis Can Happen
A 2019 study involving referrals to MS specialty clinics at Cedars-Sinai and UCLA found that nearly one in five patients who arrived with an established MS diagnosis were ultimately determined not to have the disease. Other experts use lower estimates depending on the population studied and how misdiagnosis is defined. The precise percentage should not be treated as universal, but the research establishes that the problem is significant.
Several pathways can lead to an incorrect diagnosis.
First, symptoms may be real but nonspecific. Fatigue, numbness, dizziness, pain, and cognitive difficulty occur in many conditions. If a patient also has an abnormal MRI, those two categories of evidence can appear to support each other even when the lesions and symptoms do not share one cause.
Second, diagnostic momentum can develop. Once “MS” appears in a medical record, later clinicians and radiologists may interpret new information through that label. A scan is no longer read as an unknown pattern; it is read as the scan of a person believed to have MS. This does not require negligence. It is a familiar cognitive problem in medicine: an early conclusion shapes later attention.
Third, the pressure to treat early creates a difficult risk calculation. If a patient truly has MS, delaying disease-modifying treatment may permit additional inflammatory activity and disability. Doctors may therefore begin treatment when the evidence is persuasive but not perfect. That decision can be reasonable and still turn out to be wrong.
Fourth, some disorders resemble MS closely. Migraine can produce neurological symptoms and MRI findings that create confusion. Small-vessel disease, lupus, neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, MOG antibody-associated disease, spinal problems, neuropathies, and other inflammatory or structural conditions may overlap with parts of the picture.
Finally, a patient’s condition may evolve. The pattern visible in year one may not be the pattern visible in year five. Repeated scans, new symptoms, or the absence of expected changes can cause specialists to reconsider an earlier conclusion.