Grey's Anatomy star Eric Dane‘s emotional first TV interview since shock diagnosis
The Grey's Anatomy alum discussed his struggles for the first time since being diagnosed with the aggressive neurological disorder with Diane Sawyer on Monday's episode of Good Morning America.
'I have one functioning arm. My dominant side, my left side, is functioning,' he said. 'My right side has completely stopped working', per Page Six.
The Euphoria star, 52, expects that he only has 'a few more months' before his left arm and hand give out as well.
'It's sobering,' Dane said, adding that he is now 'worried' about losing function in his legs.
The actor recalled first noticing symptoms of his disease, explaining that he felt weakness in his right hand.
'I didn't really think anything of it at the time,' he noted.
'[I] thought maybe I had been texting too much or my hand was fatigued, but a few weeks later I noticed it had gotten a little worse.'
Dane visited multiple hand specialists and neurologists for nine months until he was ultimately diagnosed with ALS.
'I will never forget those three letters,' he said of the acronym for the disease. 'It's on me the second I wake up.'
Dane turns to his wife, Rebecca Gayheart, when things 'get too hard.'
He and the actress — who share daughters Billie, 15, and Georgia, 13 and wed in 2004 — separated in 2018 but called off their divorce this past March, just weeks after his ALS diagnosis.
'I call Rebecca. I talk to her every day,' Dane said, getting choked up. 'We have managed to become better friends and better parents and she is probably my biggest champion and most stalwart supporter and I lean on her.'
The actor remains optimistic about his fate.
'I don't think this is the end of the story,' he said through tears. 'I just don't feel in my heart like this is the end of me. I'm fighting as much as I can.'
Still, Dane said that there is so much about the illness that is 'out of [his] control.'
'I'm angry because … there's a very good chance I'm going to be taken from my girls when they're very young,' he said, revealing one of his children recently rescued him from the ocean when he 'realised [he] couldn't swim.'
In April, Dane announced that he was diagnosed with ALS, which is a 'nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord,' leading to 'loss of muscle control,' according to the Mayo Clinic.
There is no known cure.
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