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hi all i received this from brenda, co-founder of plwp: >---------------------------------------------------------- >From: Brenda Tucker >Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 >Subject: Re: [nvn] Re: M.J. FOX > ><A HREF="http://www.msnbc.com/news/529773.asp">New role for Michael J. Fox</A> > >This should give you an idea Janet...he was very good, very real >Later, > >Share our dream....share our vision! >Love and hope, >Brenda >PLWP, Inc., People Living With Parkinson's ><a href="http://www.plwp.org/">http://www.plwp.org/</a> > >"You will find as you look back on your life that the moments when you have >truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of >love." Henry Drummond >---------------------------------------------------------- thank you, brenda! i have replicated the text of jane pauley's interview with MJF below janet m. paterson ---------------------------------------------------------- New role for Michael J. Fox Actor leading the fight for a cure for Parkinson's disease Feb. 12 - Back when Michael J. Fox dropped out of high school, he wanted to be everything from a hockey pro to a rock star. He settled for being a Hollywood superstar. But he never would have imagined that the most important and all-consuming role of his life would come after he left show business. Jane Pauley reports. IF LIFE IMITATED art, Michael J. Fox would be taking a long, restful vacation. But since he bid farewell to his hit show "Spin City" last May, Fox has hardly been sleeping in. He's a man with a mission and the clock is running. Michael J. Fox: "You really have to figure out what's important to you because you don't have time for what's not." Jane Pauley: "Do you miss the show?" Michael J. Fox: "I miss the people, but I'm working harder than I was then. It really was not an effective use of my time. But I miss the people tremendously." Jane Pauley: "They miss you back." Michael J. Fox: "Well I miss them." Jane Pauley: "They'd like you to answer your e-mail. Heather Locklear sent somebody an e-mail and he doesn't answer it?" Michael J. Fox: "I know I've been really bad with my e-mail, because I've been busy working on a few things." Heather Locklear and the rest of his former cast mates don't need to be told how hard Michael works to raise awareness and money for Parkinson's research. Michael knows he can count on his old friends to help out and even return the favor when his replacement, Charlie Sheen, needed a lifeline himself when he appeared on the game show, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" Maybe you've noticed a pattern. Jane Pauley: "What's with the humor?" Michael J. Fox: "This is life. And the way I approach life is with humor. My life does not begin when this struggle ends. My life is not on hold until I find a cure. Who I am is not waiting to have this lifted from me. I'm who I am now. That's our problem when we start to look at things, you know, theoretically and 'well you know this cluster of cells...' No, it's a guy! It's a guy or a girl or a woman or your grandmother. They're a person. This thing is happening inside them and maybe there's something we can do. So if I'm appealing to people I'm not going to come to them as somebody I'm not. I'm going to come to them as who I am." But Michael J. Fox today stands in stark contrast to the man I interviewed one decade ago fresh off high-riding success as the time-traveling Marty McFly in the "Back to the Future" trilogy. Back in 1991 he said, "At some point along the line, I won the lottery. I'm so lucky, that if I say there will be a parking spot in front of the bank, there will be a parking spot in front of the bank." Ironically, he'd noticed the first symptoms even then though he wasn't given the diagnosis - Parkinson's disease - until months later. Jane Pauley: "What kind of a person are you with catastrophic news?" Michael J. Fox: "When someone says to you, you have an incurable degenerative progressive disease, I go, you know, OK um ... but what, but how, you know, but then, but what's the thing? You know, there is no thing. I said, no but there's a thing and it's got to be a thing. So that's what it was. So, it was pretty much denial for like the first couple of years. I just thought I'm not going to deal with this on this level." Jane Pauley: "But looking back on it, what was the thing? Michael J. Fox: "Well, the thing was not a thing. The thing was not a button I could push and get off the elevator. The thing was getting to a place of the end of the denial of it and a certain amount of despair, where I said no, OK, I got to educate myself about this. I've to understand what I'm going through. I got to show up for this." Fox struggled privately for seven years, going public with his illness two years ago. And last spring he abruptly walked away from his career as an actor to become a fulltime advocate. Of the estimated one million Americans who have Parkinson's disease, there are other high-profile people - former attorney general Janet Reno and Muhammad Ali, one of the most famous people in the world. But Fox is a particularly powerful advocate - not only is he famous and endearing. He's so young. Less than five percent of P.D. sufferers are under the age of 50. Fox, is only 39. Jane Pauley: "What's the hard part?" Michael J. Fox: "You only have so much of you. There's only a finite amount of energy. It's tricky because people will, and it comes from their heart, but they'll ask you to do things because you have Parkinson's. But somewhere along the line, maybe they might forget that you actually have Parkinson's." Fox thinks one day he won't have Parkinson's anymore and there are respected scientists who think he could be right. P.D. happens when certain brains cells - ones that control motor function - start to die. Nobody knows what kills them. But over time, the body grows rigid. Movement becomes awkward, shaky, leading eventually to paralysis. Michael J. Fox: "I remember walking into a lobby of a building one time and it had mirrors, those mirrors all over the place. And I was really not in good shape. I was shaking and I was kind of slow and I didn't have a lot of movement in my face. And I look up and I caught my eye in the mirror and it's just - a shrunken-over guy shaking. And I just winked. I was 'Hey, how you doing?' You know, it just is what it is." Modern medicines help tremendously - being able to sit for an interview is only possible because of drugs. But ironically, its not the disease, but the medication, that causes the jerky, awkward movements. It's a side effect of the drugs called dyskinesias. Michael J. Fox: "I'm always telling people when they talk to me. I say, just remember my body language lies. You're no longer shaking but you've got this kind of spasticity which I don't seem to have a lot of until I sit in front of a camera or when I'm interviewed or give a speech. My body's not sticking around to ask my mind what it thinks. So I ignore it and I encourage you to too." Fox is less interested in spending precious research dollars on better treatments. He wants his money, and above all, federal dollars, targeting a cure. One of the most promising lines of inquiry involves stem cells. Stem cells, when transplanted in the brain, replace the dead or dying cells. But the problem - the source of stem cells, human embryos - touches a sensitive political nerve in Washington, which prompted this Canadian immigrant to trade in his green card. After becoming a U.S. citizen secretly only a year ago, Michael J. Fox cast a vote for the first time in his life, last November. Michael J. Fox: "And I had, you know, I had the sweet, older woman, you know, at the table and I said, 'Will you just tell me if I'm doing this right?' And she went, 'Yeah, you got it all.'" Jane Pauley: "Did you say, 'I'm a first time voter and I ...'" Michael J. Fox: "Oh yes. It was thrilling. I was there at six in the morning. I was there when it opened." Jane Pauley: "No kidding?" Michael J. Fox: "I think I might have been the first person in my little voting district. And my vote either did or did not make a difference. Maybe I should have registered in Florida, I don't know." President Bush has yet to announce if he will support or oppose embryonic stem cell research, and recently asked the Department of Health and Human Services to review the matter. Jane Pauley: "Have you made a personal plea to the president?" Michael J. Fox: "I haven't yet but if I was - had the good fortune to share a room with President Bush - I would not say, let's talk about stem cells. I'd say, President Bush, you have an opportunity within the four years - and I'm sure you would like to think eight years and that may be the case and trust me if it happens within four, I will go to war for you to have eight. You have an opportunity to oversee the cure of a major disease. And that's a tremendous legacy." Michael J. Fox doesn't know what caused his Parkinson's, but he says he doesn't care. Michael J. Fox: "For me, I don't need to know. I don't need to know." Jane Pauley: "I was thinking how handy it would be to have one of those DeLoreans hidden away in your garage though wouldn't it?" Michael J. Fox: "You know what? If I did, I swear to you, if I did, I would disable it in some way. I mean I don't want to go back. I mean it's just not as big as this. This is bigger. This is really exciting stuff and again, not because of my impact of what I'm going to do, whether I'm here or not, this is thing to get solved within the next 10 years, 15 years." Jane Pauley: "I can see that there is a split between how, you know, genuinely grateful you are that you have found a way to feel good about your life." Michael J. Fox: "Yes." Jane Pauley: "And an awareness that so many people who have P.D. have little to feel good about? But you got to figure that they finally caught a lucky break when Michael J. Fox came down with P.D. cause that was good for them." Michael J. Fox: "Well, I'd like it to be. Well, God will be the judge of that, but it's not about me. You chose to talk to me about Parkinson's and I'm flattered and I'm happy to do it. But you know there are other people that have it you know and nobody's asking them and in as much as you've asked me, I owe it to them to talk about it. And I'm just excited for all of us because it's really going to happen." But to three people in particular, Michael J. Fox doesn't represent the world's best hope for a cure. That's because to them, he's just dad. Jane Pauley: "In a few years you're going to have a teenager in your house." In addition to soon-to-be 12-year-old, Sam, Michael and his wife, actress Tracy Pollan, also have twin daughters, who turn six this week. Michael J. Fox: "My kids are oblivious, they really are oblivious." Jane Pauley: "Parents." Michael J. Fox: "Well, you know, my son is very smart and understands this from every level and understands it from the point of view of how it affects me. But he's very cool with it. You know, I'll be actually talking to him about something - sometimes I get muscle cramps, you know, and if I had a tonic water that's got quinine in it, it'll get rid of the cramps. And so I'll be, maybe you know, having an argument with him about homework or something and then in the middle of it, I'll be going like this and he'll go, 'No dad, you really, do you want some tonic water?' And I'll say no. And he goes, 'I'm telling you, I got that work done.'" Somehow, he's also found time to write a book, due out this year. He's thinking of calling it, "Lucky Man." Michael J. Fox: "And I said, you know, I'm going to write a book. And one of my daughters said what about? And I said, 'shaky dad' because that's what they call me. I said, it's shaky dad. So, I'm going to write a book about shaky dad. So my other daughter said, well are you going to write a book about how to be a shaky dad? And my other daughter said, no he's going to write a book about what it's like to be a shaky dad. And then it went through a whole list of how to be a shaky dad and cook and how to be a shaky dad and ride a bike and how to be a shaky dad." Fox good-humoredly calls Parkinson's disease the gift that keeps on taking. But seriously folks, he's a changed man. And he thinks he's changed for the better. Michael J. Fox: "I didn't have this kind of passion when my biggest concern was how big my Winnebago was or, you know, whether or not this movie was going to do as well as the last movie or whether the show was going to - the numbers were going to be good." Jane Pauley: "And back when your biggest problem was probably having success." Michael J. Fox: "Where I park the Ferrari." Jane Pauley: "Yes." Michael J. Fox: "No, I wasn't as happy a person then. It's kind of funny. I couldn't be still until I couldn't be still. And you know, it's a wonderful thing. It's interesting 'cause it's a progressive disease. As it gets worse, I get stronger so it's always offset. What doesn't kill me, makes me shaky. But you have to accept it first. I mean it's a real thing, you know. Factor it in and move on." The Michael J. Fox Foundation has already raised more than $1 million for Parkinson's research and next month it will fund a first round of research projects focussing on finding a cure. http://www.msnbc.com/news/529773.asp janet paterson, an akinetic rigid subtype parkie 53 now / 44 dx cd / 43 onset cd / 41 dx pd / 37 onset pd TEL: 613 256 8340 SMAIL: PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada EMAIL: [log in to unmask] URL: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/