Michael J Fox recently sat down for an interview with AARP's Magazine, to talk about living with Parkinson's at 55. Here are some highlights from the interview:
"You sure you want the truth? The truth is that on most days, there comes a point where I literally can't stop laughing at my own symptoms. Just the other morning. I come into the kitchen. Oh, good, coffee. I'm gonna get some! No, wait — I'm gonna get some for Tracy — who's at the table with the paper. I pour a cup — a little trouble there. Then I put both hands around the cup. She's watching. 'Can I get that for you, dear?' 'Nah, I got it!' Then I begin this trek across the kitchen. It starts off bad. Only gets worse. Hot java's sloshing onto my hands, onto the floor … And Tracy's watching calmly, going, 'Darling, why don't you [emphatic expletive] let me get it?' 'I'm almost there, babe!' Of course, by the time I reach the table, the cup's all but empty. 'Here's your coffee, dear — enjoy!'
There's the fact that it's 7 in the morning and 'This is how we begin our day — the right way!' But the thing that makes it hilarious to me is when I think of someone else watching all this and thinking, Poor Michael can't even get the coffee — it's so sad! After I made my diagnosis public back in 1998, I began to realize that Parkinson's gives you two things to reckon with. You deal with the condition, and you deal with people's perception of the condition. It was easy for me to tune in to the way other people were looking into my eyes and seeing their own fear reflected back. I'd assure them that 'I'm doing great' — because I was. After a while, the disconnect between the way I felt and the dread people were projecting just seemed, you know, funny."
On the support of wife Tracy when he was diagnosed:
"Tracy wasn't sentimental or romantic about it at all," he says. "No terror. No big windy … no exhibition of grief and fear. Tracy was just like, 'You've got a stone in your shoe. We'll do what we can until you can get it out. In the meantime, if you limp with the stone, that's all right. You can hold my hand, and we'll get over that.' "
Read the full interview at AARP.
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