After announcing his diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in April, Eric Dane has disclosed the initial symptoms he encountered almost a year and a half earlier.
The 52-year-old actor told Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America” Monday, “I started feeling some weakness in my right hand, and I didn’t really think anything of it at the time.”
I reasoned that either my hand was tired or I had been texting too much. However, I discovered it had gotten a bit worse a few weeks later.
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Dane claimed that after seeing a hand expert, he saw two neurologists. He finally got his “sobering” diagnosis after nine months of seeing doctors.
Dane’s dominant right arm has “completely stopped working” ever since.
“Then your left arm is all right?” Sawyer, 79, inquired.
The “Grey’s Anatomy” star said, “No, it’s going,” and stated that he believes he has “a few more months” to use his left arm.
He is also “concerned” about what will happen to his legs next.
The father of two, a former water polo and competitive swimmer, was on a boat trip a few months ago with one of his teenage kids, whom he shares with his recurrent wife, Rebecca Gayheart.
He soon discovered that he “couldn’t swim or generate enough power to get [himself] back to the boat” after plunging into the ocean. At that point, he had to acknowledge that he was no longer safe in the sea.
Dane was “crying” as his daughter “dragged[ged]” him back to the boat.
He bemoaned, “I was just heartbroken.”
The “Euphoria” star gave a firm response when asked how “angry” the sickness gets him: “Very.”
“My father was taken from me when I was young, and now there’s a very good chance I’m going to be taken from my girls while they’re very young,” he explained. “That’s why I’m angry.”
(Dane’s father committed suicide when the actor was seven years old.)
Dane intends to “spend time with [his] family and work a little bit — if [he] can” while he keeps “fighting” the illness, which is primarily “out of [his] control.”
He was careful to clarify that, in his opinion, this is not “the end” of his story.
The ALS Association defines ALS as a progressive neurodegenerative illness that damages brain and spinal cord nerve cells, ultimately resulting in the death of motor neurons.
The inability to speak, eat, move, and breathe can result from the brain’s inability to start and regulate muscle movement when motor neurons die. No known remedy exists.
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