Lucky Man A Memoir - Michael J Fox

 

I brought this book with me to Gran Canaria.  It had been in our bookshelf since 2004 (based on Jan's Heathrow express tickets I found in there), but I had always ignored it until now.   On vacation, I bring my own books, since I'll spend time near a pool where children are splashing. Therefore I take no library books, neither an e-reader. I've been reading considerably more in the last 2 years, so my choices in my own bookshelf are decreasing and as a result this once ignored book travelled with me on vacation. 

Michael J. Fox has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1990 which he made public in 1998.  This book deals with his first 13 years living with the disease.  

My dad had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in the 90ies as well. I realised I had this book in possession before my dad truly started struggling, before he got his brain surgery, before his mental regression. Yet when Jan had recommended me the book, I didn't feel ready to read it. It was too confronting.  I still avoid most media on the disease...I 've always been full of avoidance.  When family members had to be present in my dad's brain surgery in 2008,  I was relieved my mom and sister could take up the role as I can't imagine in the slightest bit that I could have done it. 

But now at a Spanish pool, I was picking up this book to start reading Michael's story and that was quite an emotional task from which I needed to grasp breath and take breaks.  Right from the start when he proclaims the disease as his biggest gift ...although a gift that keeps taking and he's a lucky man.  Bang that hit me right in the face.  I must admit that I thought "well sure, that's your point of view after 13 years, he surely must be in a different state of mind now after another 20 years".  Well, I'm wrong.  By coincidence, I saw this week that he has just won the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and he made the same statement again "it's the biggest gift".  

Wow.

Just that.  Considering any aspect of Parkinson's disease a gift,  evaluating any aspect of the disease as something positive.   It was so confronting since I don't think that my father, my mother, my sister or myself have ever been able to find anything positive to it. 

After the first chapters where he discovers being ill in a flashback, half of the book deals with his childhood and stardom.  It was a lot lighter for me to read about his first roles, his gamble and hubris to move to LA, his financial distress and naïveté and his luck to strike a role on Family Ties, how he then by exception could also take a part in this Back to the Future film by filming one during a day shift and the other in night shift. 

But then we arrived chronologically with the discovery of his trembling pinkie...the diagnosis and the self-denial.  Early in the disease, medication can cover up the first symptoms. I had flashbacks to our experiences.  You don't want other's to know since you don't want others to look at you differently, you don't want pity, you don't want to be left out, ...so you pretend it's not there. 

But if you play hide and seek, reality catches up.  It will for any patient as the disease is relentless. Michael J Fox also got trapped in a situation where planning his life and medication and excuses so elaborately to keep hiding where taking up so much energy that at one point you can't do it anymore.  My father also admitted to any symptoms and consequences that was x months or years before.   Only what we had finally come "at peace" with, while the latest developments were still not discussible and out in the open. 

For Michael J Fox, getting ill gave him the gift of getting out of his stardom bubble, landing in real life, connecting with his family better and connecting with many other patients and finding his passion and mission to influence the lives of others in his foundation. 

He's a role model how he takes on his battle. I wouldn't be able to. I wish him all the strength and support in the future.  He'll need it.