Christina Applegate says fighting breast cancer "sucks," but you shouldn't feel sorry for her.

"I still have quite a process until this is done," the actress says in the new issue of TV Guide. "Yes, it's hard. It sucks. But I'm not a victim."

She will undergo reconstructive surgery near her 37th birthday, at the end of November. She had a double mastectomy in July.

Applegate - a workaholic who clocks 14 to 16 hour days on Samantha Who - changed her outlook on life after her spring diagnosis.

"I started looking for a beach house the day I found out I had this little disease," she says. "You just kind of go, 'What are you waiting for to get the things that you want and the things you dream of?'

"I don't own tomorrow or yesterday - today is all I've got," she adds. "And if I don't make today good, then I'm only gonna' be p--ssed off tomorrow!"


Applegate has also taken time for herself to grieve. Just weeks before having both her breasts removed this summer, two of her cats died and her ex-boyfriend, Lee Grivas, was found dead of an apparent drug overdose.

"To be honest, I think that was even more difficult and more painful than anything else," she says of Grivas' death. "It still is a lot of the time."

She draws from her recent painful experiences for her day job as a sitcom star.

"I think I'm bringing a lot of me now to Sam, just in the sense of, 'This too shall pass,' you know?" she says.

Adds executive producer Don Todd: "She hasn't missed a beat.

"Even though I think she's probably suffering quite a bit physically, and obviously the emotional stuff comes and goes. It's just not in her to let what she's [going through] affect the work. She has that ability to shut it down like a guillotine falling.

Applegate's co-star, Jean Smart, agrees.

"Christina's a trouper with a capital T...I feel very maternal towards her," she says. "Very often, I tell her, 'We don't need you sitting off camera for this scene. Why don't you go to your dressing room and put your feet up?' She won't do it."

Applegate - a co-executive producer on the show - says she's slowly learning to chill out.

"I'm very much a push-through-it kind of gal," she says. "But now I don't. I speak up for myself a lot. If I feel tired, I ask for the time that I need...I'm living such a different like than I did before."

The actress, currently linked to 39-year-old rocker Martyn Lenoble, says she feels responsible for bringing awareness to breast cancer through her celebrity.

"I think I have a bigger responsibility now, and it's a welcome one...I love making people laugh," she said on Good Morning America in July. "But if I can make them think and be proactive in their life, that's way more important."