ALS is a disease with no cure that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, according to the Mayo Clinic.
WASHINGTON — A. Russell Andrews, known for his roles in “Better Call Saul” and “Straight Outta Compton,” has revealed he’s battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS.
Andrews, 64, revealed his diagnosis on Sunday in an interview with CNN’s Elex Michaelson. He appeared with his fiancée, actress Erica Tazel, who is now his caretaker.
“It’s been humbling but there’s something in the fact that I walked into a family of very caring people I did not know a year ago,” he said. “The ‘cliche family’ but they have not let us miss a step in terms of care, the attention, the awareness and the ability to get me here today.”
Andrews revealed that he first thought something was off during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying at first he thought he had a stroke.
“We didn’t work for three years and then we had back-to-back strikes, so a lot was going on,” he explained to Michaelson. “There were moments, there were twitches… I thought I was having pinched nerves in my neck, and they were quite frequent.”
“I was not able to do things that I normally do. I was dropping cups and glasses and at night it felt like things were running up and down my arm at different times and it was the nerves,” he added.
Andrews said he wasn’t able to get a proper diagnosis until years later due to a lack of health insurance.
“I wasn’t working for about three years. I lost my insurance,” he said. “But as soon as we came out of COVID, work picked up back-to-back and I was able to get it back.”
He said the first place he went to was Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles and within 15 minutes of seeing his primary care doctor, she referred him to a neurologist.
ALS is a disease with no cure that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, according to the Mayo Clinic. ALS causes loss of muscle control and gets worse with time. When voluntary muscle action is impacted, “people may lose the ability to speak, eat, move and breathe,” according to the ALS Association.
Around 5,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS every year, according to the CDC.
Its exact cause is still not known and anyone at any age can be diagnosed with ALS.
One of the most notable ALS diagnoses was Eric Dane. The former “Grey’s Anatomy” star died in February, nearly a year after publicly revealing his diagnosis.
Tazel said that she is still processing the diagnosis.
“When he originally shared with me, I was uncharacteristically calm and in a way it was an answer to a lot of questions that we had,” she said.
She added that the diagnosis taught her that love “is truly unconditional.”
“When he shared the news with me again, there was not a sigh of relief but some understanding of what was happening,” she said. “I looked at him across the room and I said, ‘At least now we know what it is and I still want to be your wife.'”