Michael J. Fox Almost Lost His Hand After Infection: ‘A Tsunami of Misfortune’

Since going public with his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 1998, Michael J. Fox hasn’t been shy about sharing his health struggles with the public. And in a new interview with Town & Country, Fox chronicles a series of medical mishaps that have affected him over the last few years. 

His 2020 book, No Time Like the Future, revealed how, in 2018, a spinal tumor threatened to paralyze him. After surgery and months of physical therapy to regain the ability to walk, Fox tripped one night in his apartment and broke his upper arm. 

“I said, ‘F**k lemonade. I’m out of the lemonade business,'” he recalls.

Since then, however, he’s realized, “That was nothing.”

He has broken his other arm and shoulder, his orbital bone and cheek, and one of his hands. “My hand got infected and then I almost lost it,” he reveals. “It was a tsunami of misfortune.”

Fox has survived 33 years since his diagnosis with Parkinson’s — on average, patients get 20. And he says he’s not afraid of what’s to come.

“One day I’ll run out of gas,” he admits. “One day I’ll just say, ‘It’s not going to happen. I’m not going out today.’ If that comes, I’ll allow myself that.”

“I’m 62 years old. Certainly, if I were to pass away tomorrow, it would be premature, but it wouldn’t be unheard of,” he continues. “And so, no, I don’t fear that.”

As for what scares him the most — “Anything that would put my family in jeopardy.” Fox and his wife of 35 years, Tracy Pollan, share four children: son Sam, 34, twin daughters Aquinnah and Schuyler, 28, and daughter Esmé, 22.

In an interview with ET back in May, Fox shared the secret to his and Pollan’s decades-long relationship, which he called “the best 35 years of my life.”

“We give each other space to make mistakes. Always remember that. Don’t perceive slights,” he said. “That’s what’s beautiful about marriage, it’s us two.”

With the time he has left, Fox is doing as much good as he possibly can. His Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research has funded nearly $2 billion in research since its start in 2000. In April, a neurology journal published groundbreaking research funded by the foundation, demonstrating how Parkinson’s can now be detected in living people by locating a particular biomarker protein.

“When I was diagnosed, it was like a drunk driving test,” Fox recalls. “Now we can say, ‘You have this protein, and we know that you have Parkinson’s.’ It opens the gates for pharmaceutical companies to come in and say, ‘We’ve got a target and we’re going to dump money into it,’ and when they dump money into it, good things happen.”

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