Michael J. Fox Continues To Have Increased Health Concerns Related To Parkinson’s Disease

Michael J. Fox is checking in with his fans to share some health updates. The Back To The Future actor explains that the last year has been rough, as he has had to have two surgeries and continuing physical therapy in order to stay mobile.

Page Six says that despite having surgery and doing the work to recover, he is not always steady on his feet, and last August, he took a fall and shattered his elbow.

“Last August, I was supposed to go to work. I woke up, walking into the kitchen to get breakfast, misstepped and I went down. I fractured the hell out of my arm. I ended up getting 19 pins and a plate. It was such a blow.”

Fox says that working through the setback was complicated, but admits that he’s become philosophical when it comes to dealing with things on his path. He says that he’s learned that it’s important not to ignore facts and fully embrace optimism, or give up and find yourself just seeing your prognosis as pessimistic.

The actor says that six months earlier he had been in a wheelchair, so what made him think it was okay to head down to the kitchen without a care in the world? He said he hadn’t given everything in the big picture equal weight.

Michael J. Fox details recent health woes https://t.co/vBPiWaPIXo pic.twitter.com/Vlot9H7ng5

— Page Six (@PageSix) March 1, 2019

Fox says now that his elbow is on the mend, he’s working on a new book about coping with the complications of Parkinson’s disease.

“My health issues last year brought me to places where I started to say, ‘Was it false hope I’d been selling? Is there a line beyond which there is no consolation’ For me to get to that place is pretty dark.”

In a chat with The New York Times, Fox talked about his new book and what he thinks now about how he’s approached his disease. The actor says he thought that he had a “relationship” with Parkinson’s, almost an agreement, but he now wonders if he was naive in his approach.

Fox says that he was really hopeful back in 2000 that with research and new drugs, there could be a cure within a decade, and thought that perhaps there would be no need for the foundation to exist. While he remains hopeful, he says he feels that, for a long time, he was glib in that he assumed that everyone was approaching the disease from the same perspective as he was, and that’s wrong.

In his new book, Fox says that he can still find humor in things. There are bad days that you think are the worst, but then after something like spinal surgery, you find out that truly, things can get much worse.

“Being in a position where I couldn’t walk and had health aides 24 hours a day, was I still prepared to say, ‘Hey, chin up!’ Parkinson’s, it’s a strange test.”