Source: Entertainment Weekly

Actor Eric Dane has been brutally honest about the reality that he’s facing after having been diagnosed with ALS, since he revealed it in April.

He isn’t stopping now.

“I have no reason to be in a good spirit at any time, on any given day,” the Grey’s Anatomy alum and ambassador for the nonprofit advocacy organization I AM ALS said during a virtual conversation held on Giving Tuesday. “I don’t think anybody would blame me if I went upstairs in my bedroom, crawled under the sheets, and spent the next two weeks crying.”

Dane, 53, said in June that he had only “one functioning arm,” due to his struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Johns Hopkins Medicine describes it as a “fatal type of motor neuron disease” that causes “progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain.” Eventually, symptoms can include paralysis and trouble breathing and swallowing.

“I think it’s imperative that I share my journey with as many people as I can because I don’t feel like my life is about me anymore,” continued Dane, who has a “super complicated” relationship with actress Rebecca Gayheart, whom he married in 2004. “And it’s something I’ve had to wrestle with because I’m a pretty selfish person, and I’d love for my life to be all about me, but I just can’t — I don’t think I’d be able to move forward if that were the case.”

Dane noted that it was “such a big deal” to him to ensure that people are informed about ALS and “what we can do to combat it and improve the landscape.”

“Because,” he continued, “it’s so rocky and littered with hurdles and bureaucracy and all this other nonsense that we’re trying to sift through so we can get to a place where we can start working on solutions.”

One of Dane’s fellow panelists was Michael Grassi, the showrunner, creator, and executive producer of NBC’s Brilliant Minds. Dane appeared on the medical drama, playing a character with ALS, on the series’ Nov. 24 episode.

“Eric, I feel like from the very beginning, the lines of communication had to be very open as we sort of entered this process together,” Grassi said. “And I think it was just very important for us to meet Eric where he was, and Eric showed up every single day, and he blew us away, and he was incredible.”

Grassi noted, too, that two of the show’s writers have had family members who struggled with ALS, so they were especially thoughtful about writing the story of a firefighter with ALS figuring out how to share his diagnosis with his family.

It was important to all of them that they didn’t sensationalize the disease.

Ahead of the episode, Grassi told USA Today that Dane’s portrayal had been well received when it was filmed.

“I have never seen this happen in my entire career, but he essentially got a 10-minute standing ovation after shooting that scene,” Grassi said. “Because it was so beautiful and so honest and so real.”

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