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In many ways, day-to-day life is tougher now than it was when Lucky Man was published. I thought I was in rough shape in 2000 when I retired from Spin City. The twin hammers of producing and performing in one hundred episodes over a four-year span had knocked me on my ass. Brain surgery two years earlier had reduced the emphatic tremor on my left side but had done nothing to diminish the trembling on my right and in my legs. Titrating medication was a daily battle with a shape-shifting enemy. The segues between being “on” and “off” my meds, transitions that under ideal circumstances transpired like quasi-civil conversations, had deteriorated into a belligerent riot of interruptions and cross talk. In a futile attempt to be “on” at the optimal times—that is, when I was performing—I would try to get through my producing duties with as little levodopa (or “L-Dopa,” the synthetic dopamine that Parkinson’s patients take to control symptoms) in my system as possible, so that when I had to act, I could up the dose and be steady in front of the cameras. Rarely, if ever, did I get it right. Getting it wrong—erring on the side of too much levodopa—brought on a torrent of dyskinesias; uncontrollable movements like undulating, weaving, rocking, and bobbing. The cruel joke was that I didn’t notice it as much going through my paces as I did afterward when I watched the footage in the editing room....(Readmore please download)

Always Looking Up: the adventures of an incurable optimist by Michael J. Fox