Terry Crews’ wife Rebecca King has publicly revealed her battle with Parkinson’s disease.
King, 60, who has been married to the actor, 57, since 1989, announced her condition on Monday’s Today Show, 11 years after being diagnosed with the progressive, incurable neurological disorder.
It causes muscle stiffness, slowness of movement, tremors, sleep disturbance, chronic fatigue, an impaired quality of life and can lead to severe disability.
Michael J. Fox was famously diagnosed with the progressive neurological condition aged 29 in 1991.
King has recently undergone a groundbreaking non-invasive procedure that uses sound waves directed into the brain to help with her symptoms, which she joyfully reveals has given her the ability to write again and stopped tremors on her right side.
She said: ‘I feel good. I’m able to write my name and my dates, and I’m able to write with my right hand for the first time in probably three years.’
King revealed her first symptoms appeared around 2012, manifesting as numbness in her left foot, which became a limp.
Her doctor believed the limp was due to working out too much, but King said her personal trainer noticed her left arm wasn’t ‘swinging as much as her right’ during some exercises.
King, who shares five children with Crews, said she then noticed her hand shaking when she applied lip gloss, which she instantly recognized as a tremor because ‘my grandmother had tremors.’
The musician claimed her doctor put her tremors down to anxiety – but after three years and the help of a Parkinson’s specialist – she was formally diagnosed.
Parkinson’s is a progressive neurological condition that destroys cells in the part of the brain that controls movement.
Sufferers are known to have diminished supplies of dopamine because nerve cells that make it have died.
There is currently no cure and no way of stopping the progression of the disease, but hundreds of scientific trials are underway to try and change that.
The disease claimed the life of boxing legend Muhammad Ali in 2016.
An emotional Crews said of his wife: ‘When they say sickness and health, this is the battle that we were designed to fight together. Where she’s weak, I’m strong. Where I’m weak, she’s strong. And we built each other up like that for almost 37 years and all the way to forever.’
King previously battled breast cancer in 2020 and underwent a double mastectomy.
She told People: ‘I’m doing 90 percent of what I want to do. Terry is my rock. And I thank God that he has the means to take care of me, allowing me to go to doctors and get the procedures I need.
‘God told me, “Keep living, Rebecca. Keep living like you’re healed,’”.
‘I couldn’t even print out my name or fill out a form [due to the tremors]. But I can now.’
Crews added: ‘My mission is to make sure she gets the best care possible,” he says. “Where she’s weak, I’m strong. There are days when there’s nothing I can do and I just have to hold her as she cries in my arms.’
Both Crews and King have been vocal about their marital struggles in recent years and, in 2021, the White Chicks star admitted that his porn addiction almost destroyed their relationship.
When asked about the secret to a long-lasting marriage, King previously said: ‘You have to make sure that you’re getting what you want and they’re getting what they want. One of the reasons I was able to stay in my marriage is because I knew what I wanted when I got married.
‘I knew that I wanted a certain life, and it turned out that he wanted what I wanted.
‘Sometimes people fall in love with people who don’t want what they want, they don’t want the same thing. One person wants kids, the other one doesn’t. That’s a recipe for disaster.
‘So I hate to say it’s like a job interview, but it really was for me, knowing that Terry’s goals were very close to mine was like a sign to me,’ she added.
‘It’s been hard, and my husband has talked openly about problems he’s had, but deep down, Terry was just a good guy and he was my friend.’
