For years, Terry Crews and his wife, Rebecca King Crews, kept a devastating diagnosis private. But this week, Rebecca revealed that she has been living with Parkinson’s disease since 2015, opening up publicly for the first time after a breakthrough treatment dramatically improved some of her symptoms.
Rebecca said the first signs appeared in 2012, when she began feeling numbness in her left foot while exercising. Eventually, she started limping, and her left arm stopped moving naturally. “My trainer noticed that my left arm wasn’t swinging,” she said on the Today show. “Then one morning I went to put lip gloss on, and my hand was shaking. I thought, ‘Hmmm, I know what that means.’”
Her grandmother and uncle had both experienced tremors, but doctors initially brushed off her symptoms. One physician told her it was anxiety, while another suggested she was simply overtraining. It took three years before a Parkinson’s specialist finally connected the dots.
Instead of speaking out immediately, Rebecca continued working. During the years between her first symptoms and diagnosis, she was writing a book, recording music, and building a clothing line.
“What was in my heart was just keep swimming, just keep walking, just keep going,” she said. “And I’m going to keep going. I don’t believe that you just lay down and die just because you got a diagnosis.”
That determination became even more important after she was also diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020 and underwent a double mastectomy. She is now cancer-free.
Rebecca decided to share her story now because of a newly approved focused ultrasound procedure she underwent in March. The treatment uses MRI-guided ultrasound to target the brain regions responsible for movement symptoms. Last year, the FDA expanded approval so both sides of the brain can be treated in people with advanced Parkinson’s.
The changes have been powerful enough to move Terry to tears. “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,” he said. “I’m choked up just thinking about it.”
The couple, who have been married for nearly 37 years, said they have faced the illness together from the beginning. “When they say ‘in sickness and in health,’ this is the battle we were designed to fight together,” Terry said.
Although men are diagnosed more often, more than 400,000 women in the United States live with Parkinson’s, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation. Women frequently experience delayed diagnoses, are more likely to be told their symptoms are stress-related, and often have less access to specialists and clinical trials.
Women with Parkinson’s also tend to report more anxiety, fatigue, pain, and tremor-heavy symptoms than men.
Now, Rebecca says she hopes going public can help others. “The only reason I’m going public is because I finally have some uplifting information to offer,” she said.
Terry agreed: “We feel hopeful. We really feel like we are on the edge of a cure for Parkinson’s.”
