The Times Magazine 15While our family is vacationing at a celebrity-
dense resort in Turks and Caicos during
Christmas week, I am ailing from a pinched
sciatic nerve, exacerbated by a recent fall in the
hallway of my New York office. It is so painful,
I can’t even walk on the powdery sand without
enduring, with each tentative step, a dragon
pissing fire down the back of my leg. The
closest I get to the ocean is the Dune Bar, and
I don’t drink. I sit like a mope, gazing beachward,
sucking on a virgin piña colada, the irony not
lost that, in spite of my abstemiousness, I still
have a fair chance of sliding off my barstool.
I have questions that need answers: why
are my limbs weak? Why are my fingers
and toes numb? And why, as my hero Elvis
Costello sings, can I not stand up for falling
down? My propensity for falling – on my ass,
face and other body parts – is insidious.
When I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s
(PD) in 1991, my wife, Tracy, and I were not
even 30 years old and newly married with a
young son. After 30 years, I have established
a sort of détente with the disease. I’ve long
realised that control is out of the question.
Instead, I’ve settled for an understanding
that requires adaptability and resilience.
But unrelated to PD, a new MRI reveals
the answer I have been dreading for a long
time. A tumour high on my spinal cord is well
on its way to leaving me paralysed.I shuffle down a corridor of the medical centre
towards a tall man in a white coat, about
20 steps away. It seems like 20 miles. Having
difficulty with balance, I’m palming the wall
for support. When we reach Dr Theodore, he
shows Tracy into a handsome office and me
into the adjoining exam room. It’s the type of
set-up you’d expect for an acclaimed surgeon.
Later, he explains that when he
was contacted about a patient with an
ependymoma in the upper thoracic spinal cord
that no one else wanted to touch, it got his
attention. My identity was not revealed until
after Dr Theodore agreed to consider my case.
“Any neurosurgeon,” he says, “would get
a pit in their stomach, looking at your spine.
I just had to take a deep breath.” Dr Theodore
says he understands why others have shied
away from this as being inoperable. “Given
the size and location of the tumour at thecervicothoracic junction, it is risky.” He then
leans forward and confides, “I mean, who wants
to be the guy who paralyses Michael J Fox?”It’s 7am on the day of my surgery. I’m wheeled
into the operating room. Strangers in scrubs,
like pale green ghosts, float around the table.
Conferring in mumbles, they point their heads
towards me and mutter some more. It hits
me. Is the surgery going to work or is my spine
ultimately beyond repair? What if this turns
out to be an express ticket to where I was going
to end up anyway?
Transferred post-surgery to the
neurocritical care unit, I begin the torpid
re-emergence from the anaesthesia and sample
small bites of consciousness. Through heavy
eyelids, I see a soft-focus Tracy; by her side,
one of my three daughters, Schuyler. If any of
us imagined we’d be high-fiving each other in
the afterglow of victory, we were mistaken.
To Tracy, I seem “level-headed”. But over
the next few hours, we begin dealing with a
new reality, or surreality. My grasp on where
I am and who I am becomes tenuous. For our
daughter, a recent psychology graduate, it is
traumatising, a crash course in semi-madness.
The triggering event: two orderlies transfer
me into a railed bed. I cannot feel my legs or
my back. I can’t feel my body’s weight pushing
against the surface of the bed. I have a very
real sensation of sliding. A slight panic ensues.
I start sputtering in a rising voice, “I’m slipping
off the bed. I’m falling!” The staff’s reassuring
(condescending?) smiles piss me off. I urgently
insist that they are trying to spill me from the
bed and onto the hospital tiles.
Apparently, I had been administered
an unusually generous allowance of
anaesthetic over two successive days. There
was yesterday’s dose to ensure a perfect
MRI; light but effective in knocking me out.
And then, less than 24 hours later, a more
substantial round to prepare for surgery. Mid-
procedure, another dose had been required.
Added to the cocktail, an opiate analgesic for
pain management, plus my regular PD meds,
and the end result is one spaced cowboy.
I’m convinced that there’s a conspiracy
to injure and humiliate me. I am sure that
the hospital has lured me here under false
pretences. I shout at the medical team, “You
were supposed to fix me, but I can’t feel my
back. I can’t feel my legs. You’re not doctors;
you’re actors. You’re tricking me. I know- I’m an actor too.” And here come the threats.
“You’re going to get a call from my lawyer,
Cliff.” (Cliff, an even-keeled entertainment
lawyer, would want no part of this.)
The evening brings more delusions.
I am surrounded by illegible graffiti and
animated cartoon characters, icons and
avatars inscribed on the ether between my
PREVIOUS SPREAD: RANDALL SLAVIN/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES. THIS PAGE: GETTY IMAGES eyes and the nearest wall. I complain to
eith Richards, drink in hand, a massive skull ring
tapping the crystal of his cocktail glass, lights a
fresh cigarette off the cherry of his last. “Foxy”
- his voice is a warm cackle – “Happy New Year.”
“Same to you, Keith.” (I’m not worthy.) In actual fact,
I feel anything but happy.
K
Michael J Fox landed his first acting role at
15 and was a household name by 21 thanks
to his award-winning performance as Alex
Keaton in the sitcom Family Ties. The actress
Tracy Pollan, who played his girlfriend on
the show, later became his partner in real
life. They have been married for 32 years
and have four children.
He found fame on the big screen in 1985,
starring in Teen Wolf and the pop-culture
phenomenon Back to the Future, which took
more than $380 million at the box office. The
sitcom Spin City brought him further acclaim.
At the peak of his career, aged 29, he
was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s
disease. He kept the neurological condition
private for seven years, until the involuntary
tremors became too intrusive to conceal and
he publicly revealed the diagnosis in 1998.
Due to the physical symptoms of the
illness, he turned to voiceover work in
animated films such as Stuart Little and
Homeward Bound, before making a return to
acting, most notably in The Good Wife as a
Machiavellian New York attorney who also
suffers from debilitating tremors.
He founded the Michael J Fox Foundation
in 2000. In the ensuing 20 years it has raised
$700 million for research into the treatment
of Parkinson’s.