Alan Alda Talks Parkinson’s And His Polio Battle As A Child
by Corey AtadAlan Alda has faced serious health challenges throughout his life.
In the new AARP the Magazine, the 84-year-old “M*A*S*H” star talks about life under quarantine, revealing that he’s doing well, all things considered.
“I’m having a good time under the circumstances,” Alda says, according to People. “I’ve found a lot of positive things. I’m very happy about some of the changes we’ve had to go through. For one thing, my wife Arlene is looking for ways to be creative during this time, so she’s gone back to painting and drawing, and she plays the piano every day and she’s experimenting with cooking.” He adds: “I haven’t eaten this well since the last epidemic.”
But while he may be okay amid the coronavirus pandemic, Alda talks about being diagnosed with polio when he was seven years old and having to go through therapy for months, with scalding blankets wrapped around his limbs.
“It was hard on me,” he recalls. “It was harder, I think, on my parents, who couldn’t afford a nurse and had to torture me themselves. It’s always better to pay somebody to torture your kid.”
Later in life, in 2015, the actor was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
“A lot of people hear they have Parkinson’s and get depressed and panicky and don’t do anything, just hoping it’ll go away. It’s not going to, but you can hold off the worst symptoms. Movement helps: walking, biking, treadmills. But also specific things: I move to music a lot,” Alda says. “It’s not the end of the world when you get this diagnosis.”
Alda is staying positive through all the hardships, though, telling the magazine, “You know, with the world changing so rapidly, there’s no point in being optimistic or pessimistic about anything. You’ve just got to surf uncertainty because it’s all we get.”