Michael J. Fox Admits Parkinson’s Battle Is Getting More Difficult, “I’m Not Gonna Be 80”

You ever wonder how ‘Back to the Future‘ star Michael J. Fox is doing with his Parkinson’s disease battle? Well, we have a bit of an update for you.

The 61-year-old actor talked with CBS Sunday Morning and admitted that as he ages, the disease has more impact on his body and health.

I’m not gonna be 80. I’m not gonna lie. It’s gettin’ hard, it’s gettin’ harder. It’s gettin’ tougher. Every day it’s tougher.

Journalist Jane Pauley tells Fox that he has not “squandered” but that his illness will one day “make the call” when it’s his time to go. Fox agreed, saying, “Yeah, it’s banging on the door.”

He then talked about how he needed surgery recently to remove a benign tumor on his spine, but the procedure messed up his walking, and he started to “break” other parts of his body because he wasn’t walking correctly. He revealed he broke his elbow, hand and a bone in his face.

He adds that the ‘big killer’ of Parkinson’s disease is ‘falling’ and can also be ‘aspirating food and getting pneumonia,’ noting it is ‘all these subtle ways that gets ya.’

Fox repeated the saying, “You don’t die from Parkinson’s. You die with Parkinson’s.”

You’ll remember he was first diagnosed with the disease when he was 29-years-old. It was a major blow as he was one of the hottest actors in Hollywood at the time.

Since his diagnosis, he has become a leading advocate for research for the condition, which impacts somewhere between 500,000 and one million people.

Fox has accepted the fact that a cure probably won’t happen in his lifetime, but he’s hopeful that future generations will be saved.