What To Know
- On Today, Rebecca King-Crews revealed that she has been living with Parkinson’s disease since 2015.
- She spoke out to raise awareness for a recent procedure she underwent to treat symptoms on one side of her body.
- Terry Crews expressed admiration for his wife’s strength, highlighting their partnership through her health battles with both Parkinson’s disease and breast cancer.
Terry Crews and his wife, Rebecca King-Crews, stopped by Today to share some important health news.
During the NBC morning show’s Monday, April 6, episode, King-Crews revealed that she has been living with Parkinson’s disease since 2015.
“I feel good,” she told Craig Melvin of her current condition. “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-Crews was able to write her name for the first time in years thanks to a recent procedure that helped with the Parkinson’s symptoms on the right side of her body.
“I’m seeing improvement in my symptoms,” she explained. “I’m still in recovery. They say it’s about three months of recovery, so as you recover, you see more improvement.” (King-Crews will undergo the same procedure to treat the left side of her body in September.)
When it comes to adjusting to her life post-surgery, King-Crews said she’s “still figuring it out,” adding, “Part of the procedure is to improve symptoms. So, you’re improved on one side and not on the other, so it can make you feel a little more aware of the other. However, each day that I do things, I’m aware of the benefit that’s already been to me on the one side of the body. So, I’m looking forward to doing the left side.”
During the conversation, King-Crews shared that she began experiencing symptoms in 2012, including numbness in her foot and her arm not swinging when she walked. She went to a doctor after her hand began to shake, but it was dismissed as anxiety.
“No disrespect to him, but I asked for referrals, and I got them. And it took three years to diagnose me,” she stated.
As for why she waited until now to share her health journey? “Two reasons. One is that I don’t believe in telling my story just so you can know my story and feel sorry for me,” King-Crews stated. “I really believe that this procedure and others like it are the new frontier of medicine. They were able to go into my brain without cutting me open. Non-invasive, at all.”
Secondly, King-Crews wanted to spread awareness about the procedure to “make it more available to others, because it’s an expensive surgery.” She added, “And just to give hope to people with Parkinson’s because I believe that we’re gonna find a cure.”
Crews, for his part, is just as hopeful that his wife will help raise awareness for the disease and the procedure through speaking out. “To watch her go through what she’s gone through over the last 10 to 12 years, it’s been very, very hard. The tremors, the not sleeping, the loss of balance. To watch her write her name for the first time in three years, let me tell you, man — I don’t know what to say. I’m choked up just thinking about it because she’s the rock of our lives,” the America’s Got Talent host gushed.
Crews went on to call his wife a “superhero” for not only battling her Parkinson’s disease, but also beating breast cancer after being diagnosed in 2020. “This is why you get married. My thing is, when they say, ‘In sickness and in health,’ this is the battle that we were designed to fight together,” he stated. “And that’s the whole way I see it. I’m like, ‘Where she’s weak, I’m strong. Where I’m weak, she’s strong.’ And we’ve built each other up like that for almost 37 years, and all the way until forever. That’s how we’re doing it.”
Today, Weekdays, 7a/6c, NBC
