In April, Eric Dane announced to the world that he has ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and now he's revealing the very first symptom he noticed about a year and a half ago, though at the time he brushed it off, per Variety. "I started experiencing some weakness in my right hand," the Grey's Anatomy and Euphoria actor, 52, told Diane Sawyer in an interview that aired Monday on Good Morning America. "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, but a few weeks later I noticed it had gotten a little worse."
Dane said he then saw various hand specialists, then neurologists, who finally diagnosed the incurable degenerative nerve disorder that wears down the nerves and eventually causes paralysis and death. He added that the right side of his upper body has since "completely stopped working," though he is still able to walk, and that now, with weakness starting in his left hand, he believes he'll lose functionality on that side in the coming months as well—a "sobering" prospect, he noted.
One recent incident that was especially difficult for Dane took place during a snorkeling adventure, in which the once-competitive swimmer became fatigued and had to be "dragged" back to the boat by his teen daughter, per Us Weekly. "I was like, breaking down in tears," he told Sawyer. "I was just heartbroken." Still, Dane—who lost his own father to suicide when he was 7 and is "angry" that his daughters, with actor Rebecca Gayheart, also face losing a parent at a young age—isn't giving up. "In my heart, I don't feel like this is the end of me," he said. "I'm fighting as much as I can. There's so much about it that's out of my control." (More Eric Dane stories.)
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