"[H]e talked about how it had all been for the best. Parkinson’s, he said, had made him quit drinking, which in turn had probably saved his marriage."

"Being diagnosed at the heartbreakingly young age of 29 had also knocked the ego out of his career ambitions, so he could do smaller things he was proud of... When Fox was diagnosed, he had been married for three years and his son, Sam, was a toddler. At first, he couldn’t believe it.... There were, he says, some dark days spent lying on the sofa, but after a while he got bored. 'Then I came to a place of gratitude. Finding something to be grateful for is what it’s about,' he says. Optimism is about the promises of the future, gratitude looks at the present. Fox has retrained his focus from running towards what will be, to seeing what is. He and [his wife Tracy] Pollan spent lockdown on Long Island with all their children: Sam, 31, Schuyler and Aquinnah, 25, and Esme, 19. 'We were always linger-after-dinner people anyway, and now we were lingering and talking about what people were going through. Doing jigsaws, Tracy cooking up a storm, everyone there, these wonderful children and this great wife,' he says. When Fox says 'I can’t believe I have this life,' he is not referring to the restrictions of Parkinson’s – he is talking about his happy home.... 'As limited as I am in some regards, if you’d told me when I was diagnosed that I’d have this life now and do the things that I do, I’d have said, ‘I’ll take it.’ I can move around – it takes some planning, but I can move. I can think, I can communicate and I can express affection. What else do you want?'" 

 From "Michael J Fox: ‘Every step now is a frigging math problem, so I take it slow’" (The Guardian).