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The Unsinkable Michael J. Fox October 2000 - The Spin City star hasn't let Parkinson's Disease keep him from doing what he calls 'the next right thing': funneling his remarkable energies toward research - and a cure. Michael J. Fox is almost in over his head. In fact, at this moment, he is hip-deep in the Atlantic Ocean, staring down a thundering wave that is about to knock him on his butt. And he is laughing, happy to be standing in water so cold that he's the only bather on this stretch of Hamptons beach. And it was his idea, despite the fact that he's sporting a $2,000 suit, shoes, white shirt, tie, pocket square - the works. For the moment, Fox is doing what made us all fall in love with him 18 years ago on 'Family Ties': performing. But today we're here to talk about his current day job, combating Parkinson's disease through his foundation. In September 1998, the Spin City star stunned the world by announcing he had been diagnosed with the degenerative neurological condition - in fact, had been secretly fighting it for seven years. The worldwide response was staggering, particularly to him. Fortunately, he had gotten used to the idea, and by the time the public started grieving for him, he had stopped grieving for himself. And now he's writing a book about it'a funny, highly personal, gorgeously written account of what it's like when a 30-year-old man is told he has an 80-year-old's disease. There is no cure, at least at this moment - a problem Fox feels confident will be solved in as little as a decade. To that end, he is leading the crusade: raising millions, setting up a Web site, sitting down with neurosurgeons, learning about cell implantation - whatever it takes. It happens to be right up the alley of this self-taught Canadian, who dropped out of high school in his senior year and moved to Hollywood (although he eventually picked up his GED). 'There are benefits to being an autodidact', Fox says. 'Everything I know is something I had to make an effort to go and find out.' His partners in this education are his wife of 12 years, actress Tracy Pollan, as well as their three children, 11-year-old Sam and five-year-old twin girls Schuyler and Aquinnah, all of whom divide their time between a New York apartment and a house in Connecticut. And though his life is packed, Michael J. Fox will make time in November to do something he's always wanted to do: vote. ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT VOTING FOR THE FIRST TIME? I am thrilled, the privilege being so new. I am 39 years old and have never voted. I left Canada at 18, so I couldn't vote there. I cast a ballot in this year's New York primary mainly as a dress rehearsal. I said, 'I don't even know how to pull the levers' - which were ghastly. I can't imagine how many votes get lost. WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO BECOME A CITIZEN THIS YEAR? Having lived here for 20 years, I have an immigrant's love of this country. America is an amazing compact, an agreement - a country where we try, every day, on some level, to get along. I love my Canadian-ness, but this is where I came, was accepted, was able to do what I wanted. I don't mind the problems that come with America. Canada is a little neater, but I like it messy. I love America's goofiness, its hypocrisy, the millions of little puzzles that you see anytime in America. I love that they haven't figured out everything. PEOPLE THINK OF YOU AS A POLITICAL ANIMAL That's not true. Although I'm in a political situation, the core issue - Parkinson's - is nonpartisan, and the approach is bipartisan. I never saw myself as part of the political system. I don't want to represent myself as any kind of mover and shaker - no pun intended - because I am learning. I just happen to be in this position where I can have an impact, perhaps represent people who may not be represented. That's enough for now. Frankly, I have a vote, which is as much responsibility as I'm ready for. BUT YOU LIKE POLITICS? I always enjoyed the political season. In junior high school, I was a vote counter for the Liberal party of British Columbia. That people do not vote, assume they won't like whomever is elected, take the mechanics of society for granted, isn't just irresponsible, it's stupid. Those same folks will stop at a traffic light when it is red, go when it's green, trusting that when they do, someone else will stop because it's red. That's what America is based on. Don't participate and you'll get broadsided. DO YOU HAVE POLITICAL HEROES? Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, Gandhi. I gravitate toward underdogs with the courage of their convictions, who realize that things are not theoretical - something I see a lot, in terms of my illness, with people I'm close to. I tell them, 'I can do this or that; nothing else. It's not theoretical. I absolutely cannot function.' People like Ali didn't say, 'In theory, this is how I would like things to be.' They said, 'This is the way it needs to be' - whether it took passive resistance or whatever. YOU BROUGHT ALI TO THE GEORGE/CREATIVE COALITION PARTY FOR YOUR PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION AT THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION. HAD YOU MET BEFORE? No, just spoken on the phone. And I never saw anyone so eloquent in his silence. BUT THERE'S SO MUCH CONVERSATION GOING ON IN HIS EYES. SUCH CURIOSITY. So much. Ali loves life, has a vibrancy, a passion. He did a magic trick for the audience that night, not just to show manual dexterity, but to break down the compartmentalization of sick people, to say, 'We are very much alive, in life,' not 'Please visit us and when you pass by the box, leave a quarter.' ONE OF THE IMPORTANT THINGS THAT BOTH ALI AND YOU DO IS SHOW PEOPLE WHAT IT'S LIKE TO HAVE PARKINSON'S. You hope so, but the morning after the party I had to laugh because a reporter, in the Philadelphia Daily News, chided me for showing up late. 'Fox showed up not on time, looking distracted, with his hands in his pockets, letting his wife lead him in.' Hey, man, I was just waiting for my medication to kick in. YOU WERE DIAGNOSED WITH PARKINSON'S IN 1991. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST REACTION? I didn't want to deal with it. I stuck the pills in my pocket, taking them every now and then. In the beginning, I didn't take drugs for comfort or therapeutic purposes; it was purely about hiding. Drugs existed only as a tool to mask my illness. YOU WERE IN DENIAL. Absolutely. AND WHY NOT? YOU?VE BEEN INFORMED, AT 30, THAT YOU HAVE A LIFELONG, SEEMINGLY INCURABLE ILLNESS. What they said was: 'You're a 30-year-old guy with the disease of an 80-year-old man. And 12 years down the line you may not be able to work anymore.' That was so abstract. If you are me, you say, 'Okay, there's an angle here. Just keep dancing.' WHAT WAS YOUR DOCTOR TELLING YOU? I didn't have a real, established relationship with a neurologist because I'd decided it was crap. THE NEUROLOGIST DIAGNOSED YOU AND - I never saw him again. I got a couple of second opinions but did not want to believe it. My feeling always was: 'I can get out of anything. I can negotiate, figure out a way, do something. That particular train is going to come by; I'll jump into that open boxcar and get out of this.' That's the way my life had always worked. I knew the condition was permanent, but on a list of everything that was screwed up in my life, it would have been way down there, because I could not look at it. WHAT IS PARKINSON'S? WHAT?S HAPPENING IN YOUR BODY? There's just this one thing that isn't working. Take me: I'm 39, in terrific health, everything's functioning great, except one part of my brain isn't creating dopamine. It's like an engine without any motor oil. If they could fix that, put a cell in that hasn't decided what it wants to be, get it to where it thinks, 'I'm a dopamine-producing cell', assimilates, and starts to produce - then I'm fixed. With Parkinson's, though my whole body gets involved, the problem is in my brain. When my foot cramps, causing a lot of pain, it's not my foot, it's my brain. Tracy will say, 'Do you want me to massage your foot?' And though I like the contact - it's great when someone you love says, 'I want to join in with what you're going through' - the pain can't be massaged out because it's in the brain, although I do tons of massage and acupuncture. I can also experience hypomimia, which limits the ability of the facial muscles to translate thoughts into sentences, which is why I sometimes mumble. Information short-circuits my brain; it circumnavigates the ordinary channels. This drives Tracy absolutely crazy, but when we're out driving, I'll be in the passenger's seat, and I'll see the wall eight inches from the car, and I have faith that we're not going to hit that wall. But my right leg picks up off the floor, and my shoulder scrinches in. WHEN YOU CAME HOME FROM THE DOCTOR AND TOLD TRACY, DID SHE UNDERSTAND WHAT HAVING PARKINSON'S MEANT? No. We were just this 30-year-old couple who had been married two years. At the beginning, I knew what pills to take but wasn't thinking long-term, wasn't saying, 'I have this disease that's incurable, that I'll have forever.' I was thinking, 'Good, I'll take this, the tremor goes away, and I can go to work.' It wasn't until I started to think in terms of, 'Okay, I gotta deal with this,' that I started to move forward. HOW LONG DID THAT PROCESS TAKE? A couple of years. DID YOU EVER SAY, 'WHY ME?' No, I didn't take it personally, which was strange. I did not get dramatic about this. I looked at it and said, 'Oh shit. Here's a hole I have to get out of.' I couldn't get my head around the concept that there was only night at the end of the tunnel. So, I didn't. I always had the feeling of being very lucky, very - CHARMED? Charmed. I might say that I'm a lucky guy, but I totally live my life on that basis - superstition, omens, it's all about luck, something happened when I was in the right place at the right time. AND SOMETHING WOULD HAPPEN AGAIN NOW. Precisely. Before I could ever say to somebody, 'This is my situation', I had to do all this other work first. After I announced that I had Parkinson's, I said to a very important friend of mine: 'It seems like so much of my life, I've walked away, waiting for the other shoe to drop.' And she said, 'You have Parkinson's disease. The other shoe already dropped.' And I was like, 'Wow. [Laughs] What a relief..' BECAUSE THE SHOE HAD DROPPED, IT WASN'T YOUR FAULT AND YOU WERE SURVIVING. That's what I'm saying - realizing that what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. [Laughs] What doesn't kill me makes me vibrate. And I was more than surviving. Now I'm happier than I ever was, much happier. There's much more enjoyment in my life. By Nancy Collins Copyright 2000 Hachette Filipacchi http://www.georgemag.com/xp6/George/Features/1000/Interview.xml janet paterson 53 now / 44 dx cd / 43 onset cd / 41 dx pd / 37 onset pd TEL: 613 256 8340 URL: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ EMAIL: [log in to unmask] SMAIL: PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada