During the interview with CBS Sunday Morning anchor Jane Pauley, Fox candidly addressed the challenges of living with Parkinson’s disease, saying, “I’m not gonna lie. It’s gettin’ hard, it’s gettin’ harder. It’s gettin’ tougher. But, but, that’s the way it is. I mean, you know, who do I see about that?”
He also revealed that he recently underwent spinal surgery after the discovery of a benign tumor on his spine, which affected his ability to walk and resulted in a series of injuries. Fox remarked, “[I] broke this arm, and I broke this arm, I broke this elbow. I broke my face. I broke my hand.”
Summing up his perspective on the disease, Fox stated, “You don’t die from Parkinson’s. You die with Parkinson’s. I’ve been thinking about the mortality of it. … I’m not gonna be 80.”
Michael J. Fox’s ongoing battle with Parkinson’s, which began with his diagnosis in 1991 when he noticed a tremor in his pinkie finger, has once again taken the spotlight as he prepares to release his new documentary, “Still.” This documentary chronicles the actor’s life over the past three decades.
In the film, he openly admits, “I’m in intense pain. Each tremor is like a seismic jolt.” He expanded on this in a recent interview, stating, “It’s not so much pain from the movement, but from the not moving. It’s when you freeze, and in that freezing, that not-movement becomes infused with all this energy and it becomes this burning, impending thing that never happens. I don’t want to get the violins out. I’ve broken my hand, my elbow, my humerus, my other humerus, my shoulder, my face, and some other s— too.
