Alan Alda recently announced that he has Parkinson’s disease. Alda has had the disease for up to 3 and a half years now. Throughout this time, he claims that life did not stop at all. In fact, he led a rather full life through these years. Alan Alda shared that he has acted, given talks, and even helped at Alda Center for Communicating Science. He said that ever since he started his new podcast, arrived on television for a lot of time in the past weeks. He himself saw his thumb twitching a few times. And Alan Alda figured that it’s just a matter of time before somebody would come up with a sad related story. But that’s not how the 82-year old actor considers his life.
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Alan Alda shared that he once read an article talking about how acting out one’s dream could be an indicator of Parkinson’s.
Even when there were no other symptoms, Alda asked his doctor to run a scan. He added that he considered it because in a dream, he would see someone attacking him and he would resist by throwing a sac at him. And in reality, he would be throwing a pillow at his wife. Alan Alda claimed that he wanted to know if he had Parkinson’s disease as early as he could. If he did, he wanted to do whatever he could before things started to show up. Months later, he observed things like his thumb twitching.
Alan Alda took this to share on Twitter because he wanted his followers to feel encouraged to take action if they were experiencing a similar disease.
The actor admits that sometimes symptoms can be really severe and scare the patient as well as their families.
But for him, they were fine at the stage and he did not want to immobilized by fear. Ever since he has been diagnosed, he has lived a richer life. Alan Alda is taking boxing lessons and playing tennis almost three times a week.
He further shared that by bringing it out to the public, his worries have decreased. Now, while being on TV, he does not have to wonder if people will see him thumb twitching. Alan Alda believes that this is just a reality of his life now, and he is going to accept it.
The actor hopes that by using his celebrity status, he can spread awareness about the disease.
He is surely positive, and motivating others to follow suit. He shared that,
I’m not angry because it’s a challenge,” he said. “You know you’ve got to cross the street. There are cars coming. How do you get across the street? You don’t just sit on the pavement and say, ‘Well, I guess I’ll never cross the street again.’ You find a way to do it.
Instead of manipulating the popularity he has, Alan Alda is doing something great for so many out there. And that’s exactly the spirit we need in all our celebrities.