Lucky Man (32 page)

Without my even realizing it, my whole system of symptom management changed. I began to see that being “off” in a public situation was really only a problem if
I
found it troublesome—if it kept me from doing something I wanted to do. If not, then being “off” was downgraded to the status of mere inconvenience. My tremoring, shuffling, and dyskinesias might earn me second looks from people, but what the hell, I was
that guy from TV
. I was used to getting second looks. So what if the second look now might mean,
oh, that's right, I heard he has Parkinson's
.

One evening a few months after I revealed my diagnosis, Tracy and I attended a benefit fund-raiser in New York City, one of those glitzy galas with speeches, a charity auction, and for a grand finale, a big-name musical act—in this case, the Who. All through the early part of the evening, during the speechifying and fund-raising, the lights in the banquet hall were ablaze, and there at table number six sat shaky me, extravagantly symptomatic. Maybe it had something to do with the salmon appetizers—sometimes eating too much protein interferes with the Sinemet. Rigid almost to the point of being frozen, except for a persistent flapping in my right arm, I was aware that many of the diners at the surrounding tables couldn't keep their eyes off me. It didn't bother me a bit, although I did try to be extra careful during the auction part of the proceedings—having Parkinson's at an auction can be an expensive proposition.

“I just hope my pills kick in by the time the Who comes on,” I told Tracy. “Because I want to be able to relax and enjoy the music.” That's all I was thinking about. I realized this represented a 180-degree change in outlook, a change made possible by my willingness to let others in on my disease. A year earlier, I would have looked at the same situation the other way around.
If I can just hold it together now so nobody notices
, I'd have told myself,
I don't care how I feel when the lights go down and the show starts
. Disclosure had allowed me to rearrange life so that I could get more from it. Sure enough, the lights went down, Pete Townshend windmilled, Roger Daltrey screamed, and I felt that welcome, quick couple of spasms in my left leg—
oh baby, I love it when the drugs kick in
.

With my P.D. out in the open, negotiating my responsibilities while finishing out the 1998–99
Spin City
season was significantly easier than it would have been had I remained closeted. Whether people knew or didn't know, however, made no difference to the disease, and my symptoms continued steadily to worsen. Even without the burden of maintaining a false front, the stress of the job was still considerable, and by the beginning of April, when the show wrapped and we all went off on hiatus, it was clear that I was in worse shape than when we had begun production the previous August.

In preparation for the next season, we made some changes, hoping to lighten my load. One of them was Gary's idea. He and I had reconciled our differences—Gary had called to show support soon after the events of Thanksgiving, and I consulted him often on various production questions. “You know, there's no law that says you have to do the show on Friday nights,” Gary said. “Why don't you film on Tuesdays instead? That way you get a nice two-day rest in the middle of your workweek.”

In June, as usual, we assembled the producers and writing staff to hash out story ideas for the next season. The writers would develop these over the summer months and have them in script form by the time we returned to work in August. It was at one of these meetings that I suggested introducing a new cast member, someone with a certain amount of notoriety, who could take some of the pressure off me. My partner Danelle Black mentioned Heather Locklear, erstwhile femme fatale from both
Dynasty
and
Melrose Place
. Tracy and I had shared a table with Heather and her husband, Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, at the Golden Globes a few years back, and I remembered them as funny and relaxed dinner companions. We spent a lot of the night kidding one another about being at the “loser” table because, while Heather and I had both been nominated, neither of us took home the statue that year.

“She'd be a home run for us,” I told the
Spin City
writing staff. True, she hadn't done a sitcom before, but I didn't think she'd have any problem with the comedy. After all,
Melrose
and
Dynasty
had been so campy, they were just a laugh track away from being sitcoms anyway. So the offer went out, and we were thrilled when she accepted. The move paid off, and in the end, I believe, it secured the future of the show.

Still, even with Heather on board to carry many of the story lines and handle much of the publicity work that had previously fallen to me, I realized early that autumn that my days as an actor on a weekly television series were nearing an end. It seemed that no matter how many concessions I made to my illness—fewer workdays, less rehearsal time, delegating more and more of the peripheral duties—it was never enough. The disease continued to take its toll. I could still get the job done, but I found that most of my time off the set was now spent resting, girding myself for the hurdle of the next episode. More than ever, the energy it took to perform my job well robbed me of the opportunity to devote time to the other interests in my life. There just wasn't much left for my family and for what was becoming a growing involvement in Parkinson's advocacy work.

U.S. Virgin Islands—December 31, 1999

After reading this far, you might conclude that all of my epiphanies come to me at or near a beach. Well, here's another one. Tracy and I were snorkeling with Sam, while Aquinnah and Schuyler were playing with friends at the shoreline. It was late in the afternoon, the best time, we were told, to spot sea turtles. I was dubious. We'd been coming to this resort for the last three winter vacations and I hadn't seen one yet. But now, directly ahead of me in the blue-green water, Sam was pointing excitedly. Then his head disappeared above the surface. T and I popped up to join him. “Did you see it?” he sputtered. “It's a big one.”

The three of us submerged again just in time to see a sea turtle push off the sandy bottom where he had been resting, trailing a billowing cloud of fine white sand. Keeping a respectful distance, we swam along behind him as he grazed the strands of sea grass just inside the coral reef. Satisfied they'd finally gotten a good look at one of these elusive creatures, Tracy and Sam made their way back to dry land, but I was mesmerized.

As the turtle and I swam on together in disjointed tandem, the turtle trying to ignore me and me trying to pose no threat, I thought of all those documentaries I had watched as a kid: thousands of hatchling baby sea turtles making their way toward the safety of the ocean while seabirds dive-bomb, picking them off one by one. Only a handful will survive. And that's just the beginning of a turtle's ordeal. I noticed that this one was missing a sizable chunk of the rear flipper on his left side. How old was this guy? I wondered. An adult, obviously. What wars had he been through?

Leave him be
, I thought, he's earned his peace. And I turned back toward shore. When I got back to the beach, Tracy was lying on a towel reading her book. I gently took it from her, puckering the pages with my wet, salty fingers.

“I'm done,” I said.

“That's nice, honey,” she replied. “Why don't you dry off while I read a few more pages, and then we'll get the kids ready for dinner.”

“With the show, I mean. I'm done with the show. I'm going to retire at the end of the season.”

The 52nd Annual Emmy Awards—Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles—September 10, 2000

After four seasons and one hundred episodes playing Mike Flaherty on
Spin City
, this was my fourth Emmy nomination for the role. The three previous years I had gone home empty-handed, but Tracy and I never failed to have a good time at the Emmys. It gave us an excuse for a rare romantic weekend getaway; we'd check into our favorite L.A. hotel, spend our days lounging by the rooftop pool, and enjoy a nice meal or two out. It was also a chance to catch up with old friends we'd left behind when we moved to New York.

Win or no win, the Emmys was always a celebration, and that was especially true this year. My final
Spin
episode aired May 23, 2000, though I'd announced my pending retirement back in January, shortly after we got back from the Caribbean. Unsure what my leaving would mean for the show's future, I wanted to give the cast and crew plenty of warning, in case they had to find work or relocate their families. When the farewell episode was broadcast, I was overwhelmed once again by the public reaction. A third of the television audience that night tuned in for my last episode.

Even better was this: It turned out the show would be able to carry on after all. Gary Goldberg agreed to return as executive producer, provided the show moved operations to the West Coast. Heather and most of the cast would come back as well, and Charlie Sheen would join the show as the new deputy mayor. I felt bad for the New York crew who would have to find new jobs, but I was thrilled for the cast and for Charlie, who, besides being a talented actor, was an old friend. The survival of the show was good news for me too, since I owned a stake in it. I'd get to watch Charlie do my old job and still receive a paycheck. God bless America.

What made this Emmy weekend really special, though, had more to do with Tracy than me. Earlier in the year she had turned in a masterful, heart-wrenching performance as a rape victim on
Law and Order: SVU
. The guest role earned her a richly deserved Emmy nomination, her first. The awards in the guest performance categories had actually been given out the previous week and unfortunately Tracy hadn't won, but during the ceremonies a clip of her work was shown, along with that of her fellow nominees. It felt perfect that we should share the evening in this way. Throughout our marriage, the circumstances of my career and then my illness had put tremendous pressure on Tracy's aspirations as an actor, and this recognition from her peers was overdue.

When Gillian Anderson called my name to collect my award for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, it would be disingenuous to suggest that I was surprised. While I was proud of my work that season, I would have to be in deep denial not to recognize that I was the sentimental favorite. But honestly, it was Tracy who I was thinking about when I bounded up to the stage. We make a point of not being one of those gushy Hollywood couples; we treasure the intimacy of our relationship and hold it close, but this time I couldn't help but gush. Most of my acceptance speech was dedicated to expressions of admiration, gratitude, and love for my wife.

It was a great moment, and I was fully in it. If I'd had a second to think about it, I might have reflected on what a different person I was now, compared to the young man—the boy—who stood before this audience accepting this award fifteen years earlier. Overwhelmed and completely unsure of myself, the joke I offered that evening—“I feel four feet tall”—betrayed a lot more about who I was than I realized at the time. And though this time I didn't say the words, there would have been no better way to mark my progress since that long ago evening than to have said, very simply, “I feel five foot five.”

Nothing more, nothing less, just exactly who I am.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing, Washington, D.C.—September 28, 1999

The setting is as intimidating as it gets: one of those Senate hearing rooms you've seen so many times on TV, where the person giving testimony at some point invariably covers his microphone and leans over to hear the whispered cautions of his lawyer. Now I am that witness, preparing to speak before a Senate subcommittee. Dozens of flashbulbs pop in front of me, blinding me momentarily. I'm not here because I'm in trouble. Or rather I
am
—along with nearly one and a half million other Parkinson's patients on whose behalf I appear—
in serious trouble
, but of a kind far graver than any group of senators could ever cause. These senators can, however, help to get us out of this trouble, and that's why I've come to Washington.

At issue is federal funding for Parkinson's research, which, as I told the committee, is inadequate and disproportionate to the amounts devoted to other areas of medical research. The underfunding of P.D. research, I tell these senators, represents a serious missed opportunity, given the current state of the science and the very real prospect of a cure. Scientists testifying after me stressed that a cure could come within ten years, but only if sufficient financial commitment is made to the effort.

My presence at these hearings marks a momentous personal step. While it's been almost a year since I first revealed I have P.D., this is the first time I've ever taken a public position of advocacy.
If you're not quite sure what to do, don't do anything yet; more will be revealed.
Well, now more
had
been revealed, like the fact that my presence at this hearing might make a difference. That, at least, is what Joan Samuelson, founder and director of the Parkinson's Action Network (PAN), told me when she called to recruit me for this trip to Washington. She was putting together a panel of people, including scientists and patients, to implore Congress to direct more money to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Joan is an attorney from northern California who was diagnosed with Parkinson's in the late 1980s at the age of thirty-seven. She continued in her legal career until 1991, when there was a push by Democrats in Congress to lift the Bush administration's ban on federal funding of fetal tissue research. (Scientists wanted to learn if healthy brain cells from discarded fetuses could be transplanted into the brains of people with P.D.; antiabortion activists had persuaded the Bush administration to ban the work.) Frustrated by the inaction of various national Parkinson's foundations, Joan became a lobbyist and began “commuting” to Washington (from her home in Sonoma County, California). Her efforts, along with those of Anne Udall, daughter of the late Congressman Mo Udall (himself a P.D. patient), played an important part in getting the ban lifted in 1993. Since then Joan has continued in her role as a leading Parkinson's advocate, founding PAN and emerging as a true hero of the Parkinson's movement.