David L. Lander
(Photo by Chris McPherson, 2002)
People With MS and the Courage to Give
Chapter 9: Coming Out About MS
PERHAPS YOU KNOW ME BEST for my portrayal of Squiggy, the greasy neighbor with the spit-curl hair in the 1970s hit television series Laverne & Shirley. Or you may have seen me in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, A League of Their Own, Used Cars, or The Man with One Red Shoe. Well, I’ve taken on another role in my career—I’m playing myself for the first time—it’s the role I was born to play.
By telling my story I hope I can make a difference in somebody’s life. I almost feel as if it’s my duty to be a National Ambassador for the MS Society. When you’ve been “anointed” with this disease, you owe it to your fellow MS-ers—to the people in your club—to tell your story.
On the set of Conan the Destroyer in 1983, I developed a terrible flu. I returned to the United States and immediately noticed that things were different about me. It seemed now they were building the curbs a lot higher. I experienced balance problems, difficulty holding objects and walking.
It was shortly after the final episode taping of Laverne & Shirley that I started to notice subtle physical problems such as numb fingers and limbs, vertigo, and difficulty with balance.
Like everyone with MS, there were clues that something was wrong with me, but nothing added up as remarkable. Symptoms appeared and disappeared as if by magic, slowly, little by little, inch by inch. I would step in holes that were not there, trip on cracks in the sidewalk, or watch a drink slip through my hands twice in one night without feeling it leave my fingertips.
It seemed like my body was out of sync, like a badly dubbed Hercules picture. I could no longer trust it to follow the simplest instructions. On some days, crossing streets and climbing curbs became a challenge. On other days I would be okay. I knew something wasn’t right, I just didn’t know what it was called, if it was serious, or if it would ever go away.
It was like living on a fault line. I knew a quake was coming, but I didn’t know when it would erupt or how big the quake would be.
On the days my body didn’t listen, I told myself it was just one of those days. But I didn’t know what “one of those days” meant; nothing hurt, my body just wasn’t working like it should. Then, without warning, I’d feel normal again. But, one morning I woke and couldn’t move my legs.
Within days my doctor had the answer.
When I was still emerging from a fog of anesthesia, Kathy, my wife, and the neurologist stood as unsteady blurs at my bedside and delivered the news. “You have multiple sclerosis.” The words sounded strange. I repeated them silently. It was unlikely that I would be able to walk again, the doctor said, and if I did, it wouldn’t be for long. High doses of steroids might help in the short term. (Back then, there were no ABCR treatments available.) But in the end, the only thing I could count on was that the disease would progress. I would get worse.
My legs lay still, completely numb from the spinal tap. The information the doctor had just given me was not sinking in. It hovered in the air, separate and incomprehensible. Instead, worst-case scenarios circled through my mind. I saw
Raymond Burr in Ironside in a wheelchair. I turned away from the doctor and looked out the window of my room, which was in a wing of private rooms on the top floor of one of the towers at Cedars Sinai Hospital. I could see only blue sky and the silhouette of another hospital tower. The doctor droned on about all the horrible things I would look forward to, and I thought, “Talk about bedside manner! Frankly, Doctor, I am not impressed.”
Three days later, I got out of my hospital bed and walked to the bathroom. I remember laughing and thinking, “I’ve had this disease for three days, and already I’m doing it wrong.” Later I learned that I had the relapsing-remitting type of MS, hence the sudden attacks and remissions.
After being diagnosed, I thought about going public. But it took just one experience to change my mind. One day while waiting for an audition, I overheard a receptionist tell a caller that the role I was up for had already been filled. Puzzled, I asked why I hadn’t been told that the part had been offered to someone else.
“Oh, it’s still open,” the receptionist replied. “It’s just that that was Richard Pryor’s agent. Pryor has multiple sclerosis. Can you believe his agent thinks he could do this part?”
I decided then and there to remain silent about my condition. I look back on the decision nineteen years later and still think it was the right one.
I tried to keep working but went to great lengths to keep my illness a secret. I did a few shows in the late nineties, like Nash Bridges and L.A. Heat, but my worst fears came true. As hard as I tried, I just could not keep up the charade. In L.A. Heat, I played an accountant who ran everywhere. I ran through bullets. I ran after cars. It was ridiculous. My double did most of the running, except once when I somehow—don’t ask me how—did the running. The director was impatient and asked that I run a little faster. Well, I did and fell flat on my face. The same thing happened in Nash Bridges. My character ran everywhere. In one scene, when I
was thrown through a plate glass window, I had to get up and run, avoiding pushcarts as I went. Run. Run. Run. Bang. Splat. Pushcart hits the Dave. Head hits the pavement. Everyone thought I was dead.
I wouldn’t tell my producers why I would sometimes lose my balance in rehearsals. I’d say I’d hurt my back in a car accident so I couldn’t do any running. Once I was rehearsing for a play in Chicago and the producers could tell I was insecure in what I was doing. My balance was wavering. They brought me into the office to talk about my “problem.” They thought I was an alcoholic. I said I was! I was actually willing to allow them to think I was an alcoholic so I wouldn’t lose my job. I thought, “How low could I stoop?”
For the first six years I didn’t even share my diagnosis with my longtime friend Michael McKean, who played my best bud, Lenny, on Laverne & Shirley. I didn’t want that to become part of our relationship.
In 1999, Penny Marshall, who played Laverne on Laverne & Shirley, called and asked me whether I was fighting MS. She’d heard a rumor from a movie producer whose daughter had the disease that I might be suffering from it as well.
Marshall told me that this producer was planning to have a dinner to benefit MS research and wanted to honor me, if I did indeed have the disease. I was shocked that someone had uncovered my secret. After talking with Kathy and Natalie, my daughter, I decided to go public.
In their June 14, 1999 issue, People magazine wrote an article about my struggle called “Out of Hiding.” They decided to play up the courage angle. That was funny to me because I think of a firefighter going into a burning building to save a baby as someone with courage, not an actor posing as a drunk to save his career.
But it does take courage to “come out.” Whether it is issues relating to work, relationships, privacy, whatever, the isolation is the same. After the People article, someone wrote me a letter that said, “Dear Dave, Welcome to the club.” I often
think about that letter. MS really is a club that none of us wanted to join, but here we are, and there is comfort in knowing we are not alone.
I hope I can make a difference in somebody’s life, to really talk to people who are going through the same fears I was going through. These days I almost feel as if it’s my duty to be a National Ambassador for the MS Society. When you feel as if you’ve been anointed with this disease, you owe it to your fellow MS-ers—to the people in your club—to tell your story.
In a way it feels tremendously liberating. I hope that others who are contemplating “coming out” will relate to my story.
For more of David’s story, see his book Fall Down Laughing: How Squiggy
Caught Multiple SclerosisandDidn’tTellNobody, J.P.Tarcher,2000,and visit
his Website at www.davidlander.com.
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