Michael J. Fox Shares How He Wants to Die After 35 Years With Parkinson’s

Michael J. Fox has been open about the tough physical realities that come with living with Parkinson’s for more than three decades. The Back to the Future star was diagnosed at just 29 back in 1991 and has spent the years since becoming one of the most visible faces of the fight against the disease.

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Through the Michael J. Fox Foundation he has helped raise more than $2 billion for research while continuing to show up in public life as much as his body allows. He recently co-wrote the memoir Future Boy, which looks back on the intense period in 1985 when he was filming Family Ties during the day and Back to the Future at night. Earlier this year he also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his long work raising awareness and funding.

In a recent conversation with People, Fox described how each morning now starts with a quick assessment of what his body can handle. “I wake up and get the message of what the day is gonna be like, and I try to adjust to it,” he said. “I keep getting new challenges physically, and I get through it. I roll around in a wheelchair a lot, and it took some getting used to.”

He no longer walks much because the risk of falling has become too high. Speaking to The Times, he explained that over a three-year stretch he broke his elbow, broke his hand, developed a serious infection in that hand, and nearly lost a finger. “I take it easy now, I don’t walk that much anymore. I can walk but it’s not pretty and it’s a bit dangerous,” he added.

Fox has said before that people do not die from Parkinson’s itself but rather with it, and he has acknowledged he does not expect to reach 80. While promoting Future Boy he also shared the way he hopes his own ending will look. “There are not many people who have had Parkinson’s for 35 years,” he said. “I’d like to just not wake up one day. That’d be really cool. I don’t want it to be dramatic. I don’t want to trip over furniture, smash my head.”

Even with those thoughts, he continues to focus on what the larger community can still do. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight he noted that after more than three decades the disease has simply become his everyday reality. “I’m thinking about what we’re going to do as a community to figure this out and find a cure and short of a cure, create treatment centres that are really groundbreaking,” he said.