|
ANNOUNCER: Living with a diagnosis of an incurable disease is difficult for even the strongest amongst us. But when you make your living in the public eye, it can present even tougher challenges.
ANNOUNCER: When actor David Lander, best know for his role as "Squiggy" on the classic sitcom "Laverne & Shirley" started showing symptoms of MS – Multiple Sclerosis – in 1984, the condition not only incapacitated him physically but financially as well.
DAVID LANDER: I noticed that while shooting – and I was shooting with the flu – I was having a lot of difficulty with my balance. They thought that I was drunk and they fired me and I knew I wasn't drunk. Eventually, in other words, about 2 months later, I started falling down a lot more than I expected. So I knew something was the matter, but I was just kind of hoping it would blow over. Then I had a really shocking reality check when I got out of bed and went splat right on the floor. I just couldn't feel my legs and I couldn't walk.
ANNOUNCER: But having a doctor tell him the name for what ailed him was only the beginning of his battle.
DAVID LANDER: At the time it was strange, because I did want to get a name for it. I said ‘well, whatever this is, it must be called something and once we find out what it's called, then we work on curing it. But when you hear "multiple sclerosis" and he says and here's something you should know: there is no cure. It will only get worse. And then, of course there was nothing – no treatments out there. Now they have the ABC drugs: Avonex, Betaseron and Copaxone. I take Avonex and that really slows the progression. But then we didn't have that.
ANNOUNCER: Fearing for his health as well as his livelihood, Lander made a decision to keep his diagnosis hidden from all but the people closest to him.
DAVID LANDER: When I started walking and then they discharged me from the hospital is when I told my wife we must keep this a secret, because if the doctor thinks that MS means you'll never walk again, what's the chance of anybody in show business being any more enlightened? I knew I was feeling OK now and didn't want to test the waters by saying "Hey, I have MS". I figured, well, maybe they'd throw me a dinner and I'd get a movie of the week, but that would be about it. So the secret was kept. When I was working and hiding it, at times I've gotten fired from a show because they thought I was drinking. I was relieved they didn't think I had MS because with drinking "well OK, that's curable". They've got a Betty Ford clinic. We don't. It's amazing the compromises that you put yourself thru.
ANNOUNCER: Ironically though, the stress of hiding the disease also exacerbated it, leading Lander to finally go public – first in a national magazine and then in a tell-all book.
DAVID LANDER: Hello, about fifteen years ago I caught the dreaded disease of Multiple Sclerosis or as the doctors call it, MS. Get it?
DAVID LANDER: Every time I started thinking "I want out of this ridiculous shell", I've put myself into and lying about it' – once you lie about it, you're bringing everyone you've told into the lie, which in this case was specifically my wife and my daughter. When people would question them about me when I left the room, they would have to come up with some lie or excuse just to protect me. I knew I would have to go eventually. I was sort of hoping I would do it –in my dream it was to do it like Michael J. Fox did it, in the fourth year of a hit TV series, saying "Listen, I've shown you I can function. I'm working, I'm making money, I'm a TV star and I have MS". But it wasn't going to happen that way, so this is the way; I guess it was meant to be.
ANNOUNCER: And as Lander discovered, turning his fear around opened up all kinds of life opportunities for him.
DAVID LANDER: What was really great was hearing from other people who had MS. Courage was a word I heard a lot, which is flattering, but I never really saw myself as a brave individual. To me courage is a fireman rushing in and saving a 5 yr old boy in a blazing fire, but me trying to hide my MS and deny my MS and everything, I didn't think was particularly brave. I think what I'm doing now may be a lot more braver, because I don't know if brave is the word at all, but it's certainly better, because I'm maybe helping people. And they're helping me because there is this great exchange.
I continue to work in show business and that's good. I really feel the more I work – at the risk of using that overused term of "role model" – but I think that it's important that people, especially the newly diagnosed people, see that you can function with this thing. It isn't the end of the world. Don't call Dr. Kevorkian. Now there are treatments for it. You can start early, a lot earlier than I did, and you can live a good, useful, creative life, and that's the most important thing that you can do in life.
|
SUMMARY
