Or is it “AARP Does Michael J. Fox“?
At any rate, AARP The Magazine has a great interview with Fox in its current issue. He talks about how he’s coping with Parkinson’s twenty-six years after his diagnosis. And I must say, he’s coping very well. He laughs off what he sees as the ridiculous aspects of PD, such as the way his shaking hands spill most of a cup of coffee one morning, and the fact that he sometimes experiences a verbal tic that results in his not coming up with the word he wants to say in the middle of a sentence.
But he’s still going strong on at least two fronts:
(1) He continues to act in high-end TV shows, like The Good Wife. The article points out that “Thirteen of his 18 Emmy nominations and five of his nine Golden Globe nominations came after his diagnosis.”
(2) He remains politically active, which is especially crucial in the current scary, haunted house (haunted White House) zeitgeist. Here are my favorite two paragraphs from the article (bolding mine):
“His message is so simple, it gets forgotten: The people living with the disease are the experts,” says Holly Teichholtz, head of communications at the Fox Foundation.
Though the foundation’s work may be at risk with the sea changes happening in Washington, Fox takes any potential setbacks as an impetus to work harder. “On average, Parkinson’s patients in this country spend $12,000 to $17,000 a year out of pocket,” he recites. “Eighty percent of Parkinson’s patients are on Medicare.” Which is why Fox and some 200 grassroots community members, representing 43 states, traveled to Washington in February to visit Capitol Hill. “If the Affordable Care Act and even Medicare come under the knife, that’s not political,” Fox says. “That’s our lives.”
So click here to read the whole article.
One other thing that I like about it: it discusses Fox’s idiosyncratic Parkinson’s symptoms. Don’t we all experience PD differently? Here’s his own situation, 26 years post diagnosis:
Fox himself is something of a medical anomaly. After a decade or so, most Parkinson’s patients become less responsive to the synthetic dopamine that can help regulate the condition’s characteristic tremors. But he’s still responsive and has found a mix of drugs that has him feeling better than he did 10 years ago. Which is why he’s been able to extend his working career far beyond the decade he was allotted in 1991. The Michael J. Fox Show finished its two-year run in 2014; The Good Wife ended in 2016. Fox also voiced the title character (a robot dog) in last year’s A.R.C.H.I.E. “My visible symptoms are distracting, but none of them hurt,” Fox says, shrugging. “The only real pain I get is in my feet, which sometimes shuffle and curl up in cramps when I’m sleeping — which is why I keep a very stiff pair of shoes on the floor next to my bed.”
