Actor Eric Dane is speaking out about his ALS diagnosis and how far and rapidly the condition has progressed.
Dane, who is known for his roles on “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Euphoria,” sat down with ABC News, saying, “I have one functioning arm ... my left side is functioning. My right side has completely stopped working.”
He said that his left arm is “going.”
“I feel like maybe a couple, few more months and I won’t have my left hand either. It’s sobering,” Dane said in the interview, which aired on “Good Morning America.”
ALS stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and is also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It is a degenerative neurological condition that causes neurons in the brain and the spinal cord that control movement to get weak, leading to paralysis. Eventually, people with the disease lose movement, speech and even the ability to breathe, the National Institutes of Health said.
There is no cure and people can succumb to the disease in two to five years after diagnosis, but some, 10%, live for a decade or more, NIH said.
Dane explained he had issues with weakness in his right hand about a year ago.
“I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. I thought maybe I’d been texting too much or my hand was fatigued,” he said. “But a few weeks later, I noticed it had gotten a little worse, so I went and saw a hand specialist, who sent me to another hand specialist.”
After a series of specialists, including two neurologists, he received the ALS diagnosis.
The most shocking incident happened when he was on a boat with his 13-year-old daughter.
Dane was a competitive swimmer and water polo star. He jumped into the ocean with his daughter and then realized he didn’t have the strength to swim.
“She dragged me back to the boat,” Dane said. He said he was emotional and cried on the watercraft. “I was just, I was, like, heartbroken.”
Despite the grim outcome, Dane does have some hope. The doctor who is leading his treatments, Dr. Merit Cudkowicz, is a leading ALS researcher.
“That’s what I got from Merit when I met her ... there was a sense of hope I didn’t get from other doctors that I met with,” Dane said. Other doctors had told him they would be “there to ... monitor my decline -- and that’s not very helpful.”
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