Michael J. Fox Looks Back on Hollywood Triumphs, Setbacks and Why ‘Parkinson’s Is the Gift That Keeps on Taking’
11.05.2023 - 15:03
/ variety.com
Michael J. Fox has been through hell, and not in the way you’re thinking. In the last few years, his mother died, his father-in-law died, and he had to put his beloved dog, Gus, a 120-pound mutt, to sleep after more than a decade of loyal companionship. And then there was an almost biblical series of health challenges, many of them indirectly related to his Parkinson’s disease. “I broke this shoulder — had it replaced. I broke this elbow. I broke this hand. I had an infection that almost cost me this finger. I broke my face. I broke this humerus,” Fox says, pointing to each part of his fractured body, before concluding with a wry snort. “And that sucked.”
That’s to say nothing of the spinal surgery he underwent in 2018 to remove a tumor, a visit to the hospital completely independent of the falls he experiences more frequently as Parkinson’s robs him of his balance. The whole thing left Fox feeling nearly as despondent as when he was first diagnosed with the disease in 1991 at the age of 29. In those days, he would retreat into his bathroom, get in the tub and ruminate with a bottle of wine or some vodka. Now sober for more than 30 years, he hasn’t used booze as a shield for a long time.
But Fox says that as he grappled with these recent losses and medical setbacks, he felt a “similar emptiness” to that dark time when doctors first delivered the Parkinson’s news. “I have aides around me quite a bit of the time in case I fall, and that lack of privacy is hard to deal with,” he says. “I lost family members, I lost my dog, I lost freedom, I lost health. I hesitate to use the term ‘depression,’ because I’m not qualified to diagnose myself, but all the signs were there.” So how, I ask, was he able to shake it off? “My
The website celebfans.org is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.