Lucky Man

by Michael J. Fox

  Tracy had developed a passion for cycling. Hours were spent exploring the rocky trails and back-country lanes around the farm. Vermont's hills were hard work, at least for me, but the flat, paved up-island roads of the Vineyard, cooled by ocean breezes, proved to be more my speed. What I remember most about that August, though, was staring at Tracy on the beach. I've always enjoyed seeing my wife in a bathing suit, but now I was paying particular attention to one part of her anatomy—her belly. Just eight weeks into her pregnancy, only she and I could tell that she was beginning to show.

  Manhattan—October 1994

  The examination table was inclined, positioning Tracy so that even as the obstetrician glided the transducer over her gently rounded belly, they both had a clear view of the sonogram monitor. Or would have, had I not been in the way.

  “Mike . . . you're hogging the TV.”

  “Sorry honey.” I'd forgotten my glasses and was crowding the screen. This would be our first look at the new baby and I was nervous, but not for any specific reason. We both knew that there was virtually no chance of our child inheriting my disease. The doctors had also assured us before we even conceived that my P.D. meds posed no risk. I was just nervous because, hell, all dads are nervous at moments like this.

  I'm pretty good at making sense of both satellite weather maps and sonograms, and basically there isn't much difference except for this: on a weather map, I look for coastline, and on a sonogram, I zero in on the spine.

  And there it was. Perfect. But wait, something strange was happening. The spine was dividing, splitting in half clean down the center, and now it was opening like a pair of scissors. What the hell?

  “Look at that,” I sputtered. “Does that mean . . . ?” But I could already hear Tracy laughing.

  “Twins,” the obstetrician said.

  I turned to look at Tracy just in time to see and hear her repeat the same word. “Twins.”

  “Oh my god,” I said to Tracy, my face breaking into a smile. “There's two of them.”

  Later that month, Sam and I went on a road trip, just us guys. With the twins coming (Sam still had no idea how dramatically his world was about to change), I knew it would be a while before we'd have a chance to be alone together on an excursion like this. (Two years later, we'd spend sixteen days driving across America, from Manhattan to Malibu, but that's its own book.)

  “If you could go any place you wanted for a weekend,” I asked my five-year-old, “what would you want to see?” I was all ready to make arrangements to fly down to Orlando, but Sam surprised me, something he does a lot.

  “Caves,” he said.

  And so we flew down to Washington, rented a car, and drove into Virginia's Shenandoah Valley where, according to the guidebooks, there are about all the mom-and-pop-operated natural cavern tours you'd ever want to see in one lifetime. Take it from me, there are. (Sam's favorite: the Luray Caverns, home of the “World's Only Stalag-pipe Organ.”)

  Before we set out from D.C., though, we paid a visit to the White House to see George Stephanopoulos, who at the time was dating Tracy's best friend. George had offered to introduce us to President Clinton. As we sat in the Oval Office waiting for the Commander-in-Chief to make his entrance, Sam chided me for wearing a T-shirt and baseball cap on such an important occasion.

  “I don't think it will be a problem with this president,” I assured Sam, and was proven right when Clinton finally bounded in. Fresh, or maybe not so fresh, from a game of tag football on the Great Lawn with some college buddies, he was wearing a T-shirt and baseball cap, as well as a pair of too-snug nylon running shorts. Sam's a big fan of trinkets and souvenirs, what he calls mojo; he already possessed an eclectic collection of old coins, Indian arrowheads, and similar treasures. The President had an impressive tchotchke collection of his own fanned out across his desk and he gave Sam a guided tour.

  I remember being particularly fascinated watching George Stephanopoulos do his job, subtly briefing the President through the course of our visit on commitments he had pending that Saturday morning. At one point he suggested that, given a choice between tie or no tie for a hastily arranged press conference on Saddam Hussein's latest violation of the Iraqi No-Fly zone, his boss should not only sport a tie but something patriotic. This is the kind of voyeurism an actor lives for. It's a measure of the good karma and synchronicity I was experiencing at this point in my life that only a few weeks later, Rob Reiner offered me the chance to play George, or at least a version of him, in The American President.

  February 1995

  At the end of the second week in February, I left the movie set in California and boarded a plane for New York. The babies weren't due until March but, as Tracy's obstetrician told us, “It's easier to get two Volkswagens out of a garage than two Buicks,” so he recommended inducing birth a month early. We still had no idea about the sex of the babies, but we did know from the amnio that they were identical. So, whatever they were, boys or girls, Tracy would be delivering a matched set.

  On February 15, 1995, we met our twin daughters. The first born was tiny and as white as alabaster, and the second, eight minutes younger, was a pound heavier and a lurid purple color. Something called twin-to-twin transfusion had been happening in utero, whereby one twin had been nearly monopolizing the blood supply. Happily, in a matter of weeks after delivery, the two girls were equally healthy.

  We named the smaller, older baby Aquinnah, the Wampenoag Indian name for the town in Martha's Vineyard where we'd spent many summers. We wanted a colorful name for this pale, delicate little creature, and Aquinnah, according to one translation, literally means “beautiful colors by the sea.” The younger girl we called Schuyler, a Dutch name meaning scholar, or teacher.

  I had been learning something important about life over the course of this year of miracles, and the birth of the twins brought the teaching all the way home. During the long, agonizing period following my diagnosis, when Tracy, for reasons that are obvious to me now, was reluctant to consider adding to our family, I had grown bitter from regret. That time is lost now, I told myself, and so is the child we might have had.

  Now we'd been given two beautiful infant daughters. This was the lesson: it wasn't for me to fret about time or loss but to appreciate each day, move forward, and have faith that something larger was at work, something with its own sense of timing and balance.

  Chapter Seven

  Like a Hole in the Head

  Boston—March 1998

  “Can I get you something to drink?” Tracy asked the doctor.

  It was Saturday evening, and we were in a suite at the Four Seasons in Boston. I was scheduled to have brain surgery in the morning. For security reasons—more specifically, for reasons of secrecy—I'd be staying in the hotel overnight and checking into the hospital only an hour or so before going under the knife—or in my case, the drill. Dr. Bruce Cook, who would be performing the surgery, had agreed to do the work on Sunday morning, when the surgery floor of the hospital would be virtually empty, in order to minimize the chances that word of the operation would get out. (The doctor later told me that Gavin De Becker's security operatives had made themselves “as inconspicuous as a group of very large people talking into their sleeves can be.”) Dr. Cook had stopped by the hotel that evening to brief Tracy and me once more on the procedure, go over the benefits and potential risks.

  “Diet cola, thanks, if you have any,” the doctor said, taking a seat on the sofa.

  “I'm surprised a neurosurgeon drinks diet soda,” Tracy said as she placed his beverage on the coffee table. “I've heard it contains chemicals that might actually be harmful to the brain.”

  I rolled my eyes. I was addicted to the stuff myself and I'd been hearing this lecture from Tracy for years.

  “Could be,” the doctor said. “All I know is if I don't drink it, I get edgy.”

  Dr. Cook began to review the methods and objectives of the next morning's procedure. I was familiar with the drill, so to speak, but much of it
was new to Tracy. My mom had flown down from Canada to be with me for the operation, and had joined us for the doctor's briefing. She hadn't heard any of it before and was visibly nervous. I knew that Bruce's calm, matter-of-fact confidence would do a lot to reassure them both.

  “You know, of course,” he began, “that this procedure does not address the Parkinson's disease itself. It is not a cure. It will not alleviate rigidity, balance issues, or many of the condition's other symptoms. What it will do, if successful, is eliminate that tremor on your left side.”

  That tremor on my left side, once an annoying twitch in my pinkie back in Gainesville (a lifetime ago), and only four years earlier the “wiggly hand” that I'd tutored Sam how to wrangle, had by now developed into something much bigger and more debilitating. Indeed, I could no longer characterize the tremor as a feature of my left hand, or even my left arm; it had become a domineering presence in the whole of my left side.

  Every time my most recent dose of Sinemet would wear off, the disease presented me with a concise history of my symptoms—first the tapping of the pinkie, then the dancing hand, and within fifteen minutes or so, the whole of my left arm would be tremoring. Tremoring, actually, is too subtle a word—the tremor would start my whole arm bouncing. Flapping like the wing of an injured bird, it would generate a seismic energy that, although originating on one side, was forceful enough to shake my entire body. Sometimes while I waited for a pill to start working, I'd have to place all of my weight on top of my arm to hide the effects of the tremor. I don't mean I was just sitting on my hand, but actually on my arm—my left butt cheek wedged into the crook of my elbow. I'd sit like that for minutes at this ridiculously awkward cant, a human leaning tower of Parkinson's.

  Tremor, of course, isn't the only symptom of P.D., but in my own version of the disease the left side tremor was so dominant, so overwhelming compared to any other symptom, that treating it with Sinemet had become problematic. Subduing the tremor meant taking an amount of L-dopa that exceeded my needs in other areas. For my other symptoms—such as rigidity and balance—this Sinemet assault was like shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun. The results were discomfort and dyskinesias. Over the four years I had been seeing Dr. Ropper, we had discussed ways to deal with this inequity. We experimented with a number of different pharmaceutical therapies, but increasingly, the option of surgery entered into our dialogue.

  Should I choose to go that route, there was one operation in particular, the thalamotomy, that Ropper felt might help. He told me about a neurosurgeon in Boston, Dr. Bruce Cook, who was having particularly good results with the procedure. Promising to pay extra close attention to Dr. Cook's patients and their outcomes, my neurologist said that when the time was right, he'd arrange for the three of us to meet. That day came in January of 1998.

  I flew up to Boston, where I met with Dr. Ropper and together we drove out to meet Dr. Cook at his clinic in North Andover, Massachusetts. I'd purposefully abstained from medicating myself that morning, so both doctors could see the tremor at its worst. Once again I submitted to the standard battery of tests, only this time with an added wrinkle. Dr. Cook videotaped me at my worst, then told me to medicate. He kept the tape rolling as the artificial dopamine did its work and the quaking eventually subsided. Then the three of us moved into his adjoining office.

  Bruce Cook, a slim, personable, slightly balding grown-up version of the brainiest kid you ever knew in high school, provided a contrast to Allan Ropper, with his more athletic bearing, stoic square-jawed countenance, and full head of graying hair. In one way, however, they were unmistakably similar: these guys were smart. The more Dr. Cook described the procedure and the relief it might offer, the more committed I became to the idea of having this operation and having him perform it. Since my symptoms were still limited to my left, less dominant side (I'm right-handed), a cessation of tremor there would be as good as a return to normal.

  Finally, I thought, my insides would match my outsides. Before P.D., at a time when outwardly I was the picture of confidence and physical agility, happiness, and success, inwardly I harbored self-doubt, was out of balance, and relied on alcohol to tip the scales. Now, having faced my fears, and reached a level of personal responsibility and peace, outwardly I gave the exact opposite impression. Could it be that this operation would at last bring both sides into alignment?

  That, at least, was the dream. Getting Dr. Cook to sign on, though, was another matter.

  “As Parkinson's tremors go,” Dr. Cook told me recently, “yours was very severe; most don't get to be so bad. I try to talk people out of surgery if it doesn't make sense for them. Their goal in having the operation has to be a reasonable one.” I hadn't been interviewing him, I realize now; he had been interviewing me.

  “I do remember when I asked you how the tremor disrupted your life, what problems or disabilities did it present in what you did from day-to-day, you told me that you had a television show, and the tremor was difficult to hide because all these people were watching you. I have to tell you the truth, that didn't resonate with me. I thought, ‘So what?’ It's a TV show. Maybe next year a different one comes on.”

  The TV show was, of course, Spin City, by now nearing the end of its second season. In many ways, the sitcom was the return to television I'd dreamed about down in New Zealand. Soon after I'd returned home, I heard from two old friends in the business who knew of my interest in returning to TV. One of them was Jeffrey Katzenberg, the dynamic and hugely successful former Paramount and Disney executive who had recently formed DreamWorks along with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. Jeffrey called to say that he'd heard a fantastic pitch for a sitcom that sounded perfect for me, from someone I knew well—Gary Goldberg.

  I was hesitant. Naturally, Gary had been one of the first people I considered talking to, but we'd had such success together with Family Ties that to try to repeat it seemed risky. For one thing, it had been seven years since we had worked together and I had changed so much since then that I knew it would be impossible—and unwise—to fall back into our old relationship, which was virtually like father and son. I didn't want to be anything less than a full partner in this venture—could Gary live with that? For another, I was determined not to repeat myself by doing another family genre comedy, but to try something more sophisticated and adult, with an element of the comedic daring that I had admired in shows like Seinfeld.

  Jeffrey was characteristically relentless, though, and flew Gary, along with a young writer-producer he was working with named Bill Lawrence, out to New York on the DreamWorks jet. The two checked into the Four Seasons in Manhattan and I met them there. It was great to see Gary again. As soon as he started to talk, I was reminded, as if I'd ever forgotten, just how good this guy was. Bill, hyper, hysterical, and whip-smart, was in his early twenties. His youthful energy seemed the perfect complement to Gary's time-tested experience. They pitched an idea about a deputy mayor of New York, reminiscent of the character I'd played in The American President, but a little more slippery and overtly comic. A week later, they faxed me a script, which I read even as it was spitting out of my machine. I'd read one page, laugh, then pass it to Tracy, who'd be laughing as I read the next. When the pages finally stopped coming, and the two of us finally stopped laughing, she and I were in total agreement—this was the show.

  After assembling a fantastic cast and a top-notch staff of very funny young writers, we debuted in September 1996. The reviews were terrific, and while our ratings, spectacular at first, did level off after a few weeks, they settled into a range that suggested long-term success.

  My instincts had served me well. Here I was, living in New York with my family, getting laughs from a studio audience in a show I could be proud of. Acting in as well as producing a weekly network television series does, however, involve a great deal of stress no matter how perfect the circumstances. And the situation was near perfect, with one caveat: my partnership with Gary was, as I'd feared, proving to be somewhat fractious. Our mutu
al respect and storied history notwithstanding, each of us was far too opinionated and perfectionist to have anything but the last word on creative issues. Gary had been in the producing business far longer than me, and was even more resistant than I was to the idea of ever having to explain himself. While the first two seasons had been a success, the stress of our creative conflict, added to all the other pressures involved in doing a weekly show, was taking its toll, and without question, exacerbating my symptoms.

  So it was that, nearing the end of my sophomore season on Spin City, I met with Drs. Ropper and Cook to discuss the possibility of surgical relief. But as Dr. Cook now says, the demands of a weekly television show were not sufficient reason in his estimation to commit to so drastic a procedure. I recently asked him what was it that finally convinced him to accept me as a patient.

  “It was something else you said to me,” he said. “You talked about Sam. About how difficult it had become to do something as simple as read a book to him. That you couldn't keep the book steady or turn the pages by yourself, and he would have to hold it for you. You also mentioned how difficult it was to go to his student-teacher conferences because you couldn't count on being able to time your medication correctly.”