Eric Dane is angry with what SLA could take girls

Eric Dane is angry. Angry that he was touched by the ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“I am angry because my father was removed when I was young, and now there is a very good chance that I was withdrawn from my daughters while they are very young,” said the actor, 52, whose father died dead when Dane was only 7 years old.

The star of “Euphoria” and “Grey’s Anatomy”, who revealed his diagnosis last Tuesday, sat with “Good Morning America” ​​to talk about his amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurative degenerative neurological condition. In the ALS, muscle neurons connecting the brain and spine to the muscles deteriorate, leaving the muscle with nothing to say what to do or when to do it. No message does not mean movement, no operation, in systems such as food and breathing.

The actor said in an interview broadcast on Monday that it had been about 18 months since he started to feel symptoms. It took a series of doctors and tests before discovering that he was one of the 5,000 people per year diagnosed with a SLA in the United States.

“I started to experience a certain weakness in my right hand and I did not really think about it at that time,” said Dane in Diane Sawyer, her voice sounding a little slower and thicker than usual. “Maybe I thought I had sent too much SMS or that my hand was tired.

“But a few weeks later, I noticed that it was a little worsened, so I went to a specialist from the hands, who sent me to another hand specialist. Then I went to see a neurologist, who sent me to another neurologist, who said:” It was well above my remuneration note. “”

Nine months after consulting the first doctor, Dane had his diagnosis.

Now, “these three letters” – Als – hit him every morning when he wakes up, he said.

“I have a functional arm … My left side works,” said Dane. “My right side has completely stopped working.”

Adding to the horror, his left arm “go,” he said. “I may feel a couple, a few more months and I won’t have my left hand either. It is sober.”

The former competitive swimmer and Water-Polo player recalled the moment when he realized that he no longer felt safe in the water. He plunged from a boat to dive with a snorkel with his daughter in the ocean, then could not “swim and generate enough power to get me back to the boat”. The youngest of his two daughters with actor Rebecca Gayheart, a 13 -year -old Georgia, had to come to his help.

After bringing the boat back, Dane said, he returned it with his friend and the apnea diving guide. Meanwhile, he broke down crying.

“My heart was broken.”

Life expectancy for people with SLA varies according to the era of the appearance of symptoms, the type of SLA and if a person is a man or a woman. The overall median median life expectancy at the start of the symptoms is 30 months, according to Als United from Greater Chicago. Some people die in a year, while others have lived 20 years older, said the group. The start earlier seems to be linked to a better survival rate.

The famous physicist Stephen Hawking, who died in 2016 at 76, is an example of someone who survived for 55 years with the disease after being diagnosed at 21. The spirits of people with ALS remain sharp while their bodies fail.

The singer “Killing Me Softly” Roberta Flack died just over two years after revealing her diagnosis of the ALS at 85.

Dane said Gayheart has become his “biggest champion” and “the biggest supporter” when he continues to work when he can, including a new series, “Countdown”.

“I don’t think it’s the end of my story,” he told Sawyer. “I just don’t have the impression, in my heart, I don’t feel like it’s the end of me. … I fight as much as possible.