This story first appeared in The Journal Gazette on June 29, 2004.
Life in the “actress protection program” can be a bit hectic.
At Teri Garr’s Los Angeles home, the dog is barking, her 10-year-old daughter wants her attention and her other phone begins to ring. All on the day after she gets back from a lecture in Chicago.
“I’m balancing 17 things at once,” the Oscar-nominated actress explains during a phone interview.
“But other than that … it’s life goes on.”
That philosophy also sums up her attitude about dealing with multiple sclerosis, a disease that affects the central nervous system.
The protection program crack is her explanation for why we haven’t seen much of her on the silver screen lately.
Garr, a paid MS Lifelines ambassador, will speak about her experiences during a “Living with MS” seminar Wednesday at the Grand Wayne Center.
MS Lifelines is a program financed by drug companies Serono and Pfizer, the makers of Rebif. Garr injects the interferon Rebif three times a week to slow the progress of the disease and boost her immune system.
“I’ve been very lucky. I have weakness on my right side; it comes and goes. It’s a progressive disease, and it affects everybody in a different way,” she says.
MS, which isn’t fatal, affects an estimated 400,000 Americans, including about 6,000 in Indiana.
Symptoms can include limb weakness and paralysis, loss of balance, bladder problems, blurred vision and fatigue.
There is no cure, and its cause is unknown, although some believe it could be a virus, says Dr. Ajay Gupta of the Fort Wayne Neurological Center, who also will speak at the seminar.
MS affects about twice as many women as men, which is typical of autoimmune diseases, he says.
There seems to be a genetic component to MS, although it isn’t a single gene defect, Gupta says. If a woman has MS, her children have a higher risk of developing the disease than the general population – and her daughter has a higher risk than her son. If a father has MS, the risk to his children doesn’t increase significantly.
Garr, who is in her 50s, first noticed a problem when she tripped while jogging 21 years ago. But it took her several years to get a diagnosis, which apparently is common for many MS patients.
She decided to handle it with her typical upbeat personality and humor, she says, because it’s important to have a positive attitude.
“That’s 90 percent of it. It’s real easy to throw in the towel.”
But her athletic background and dancer training have taught her that when you fall down, you get back up.
So, during her lecture she’ll share the “really hilarious details” about MS – like falling down, again and again. She proposes renaming the disease “ticklety-bumpty-boom.”
First, you get a tickle or tingling feeling in your leg, then you bump into something and then you fall, she explains.
And there’s her standard answer to a doctor’s question about sexual function: “I don’t know. I haven’t been invited to any lately.”
She honed her comedic talents in dozens of movies during the past 30 years, including the classics “Young Frankenstein” and “Tootsie,” for which she earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.
More recently, she played a recurring role as Phoebe’s biological mom on the hit comedy “Friends.”
Garr decided to go public about her battle with the disease nearly two years ago, not only to confront the rumors that had been whispered around Hollywood for years, but also to dispel the myths about MS.
“I thought I need to set the record straight and put a face on this,” she says, adding that the decision “probably did put a backspin on my career.”
But, she muses, when it comes to the movie industry, is there really much difference between being “handicapped” and being an actress over age 50?
“After a certain age, the windows slowly and quietly close,” she says.
She’s been doing some voice-over work and plans to start shooting a movie, tentatively titled “Liquid Dancer,” next month. She’ll play the mom of actress Shannon Elizabeth.
And Garr, a former dancer herself, keeps limber with Pilates. She also drags herself to the gym for cardio work on the bike or Stairmaster.
“But, frankly, I’m so sick of it, I could scream,” she says.
When she’s not zipping around the country giving talks about her experience with MS – she recently was named the first national chair of Women Against MS, a program of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society – she’s working on a book about her life.
It might be out as early as next year.
“I’m hoping,” she groans, admitting she’s behind in her writing.
She’s thinking of calling it “Does This Wheelchair Make Me Look Fat?” or something along those lines, even though she doesn’t use a wheelchair.
It will be true to “how I am, how I talk, and what my take is on this,” she says and it’ll reflect her attitude about MS and life in general.
“I deal with this for what it is. It’s just a bump in the road, and I keep going,” she says.
“I try to put a good spin on it. What else can you do?”
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