Eric Dane has revealed he was initially diagnosed with a treatable condition before doctors discovered he had ALS.
In his posthumous memoir, My Book of Days: A Memoir of Moments, the late Grey's Anatomy actor revealed that he turned to doctors for answers when he started to lose the use of his right hand.
He saw hand specialists and neurologists and was "shuttled from doctor to doctor and underwent a battery of tests", including an electromyography test, which involved him being "stabbed" over and over with "a needle that shot electrical currents through every muscle in my body".
Eventually, Dane was given "a diagnostic consensus" of multifocal motor neuropathy, which he described as a treatable but "rare autoimmune disorder causing extreme muscle weakness".
The Euphoria star was relieved to have an answer, yet when his body "didn't respond to the treatment", his doctors "got scared".
When he returned to his primary care doctor, he received a "grim" update.
"We've been discussing ALS. But we have to wait and see," the doctor told Dane, according to Us Weekly.
It took a further nine months of tests, such as a lumbar puncture, spinal fluid extraction and brain scans, before a "frustrated and fed up" Dane finally received his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal neurodegenerative disease that attacks the nerve cells responsible for controlling voluntary muscles.
Recalling his reaction, he wrote, "I know what the letters mean. I've prepared myself for at least that much... I know I'm facing a death sentence... My life has become a horror movie."
The actor received his diagnosis in 2024, but he did not announce it publicly until April 2025. He died in February, aged 53.
To celebrate the release of his book on Tuesday, Dane's wife, Rebecca Gayheart, gave an emotional interview on Today.
She described his diagnosis as "a gift and a curse at the same time" because it "awakened" something in him and he "really valued his life suddenly".
As for how she and their daughters move forward, the actress said, "I can't give my daughters their dad back. It's a great, tremendous loss for them. I think he really wants the girls to fight for themselves and advocate for their happiness and their joy and their mental health. They have a lot of Eric in them. I think they got all the best parts."
Dane and Gayheart, who share two teenage daughters, separated in 2018, but their split was never finalised. She supported him during his health battle.
