Rebecca Gayheart was in her closet when a phone call from husband Eric Dane, from whom she'd separated in 2017, upended life as she knew it: the actor had been diagnosed with ALS. In a first-person account for The Cut, Gayheart describes how Dane's gradual symptoms—weakness in his hand, trouble with chopsticks—gave way to a devastating confirmation and then to a crash course in how little certainty the disease offers.
The former couple, who never divorced, told their teenage daughters after consulting therapists, opting for what Gayheart calls full transparency and giving the girls direct access to Dane's doctor. Still, the unpredictable progression has been hard on them, from falls on a vacation to the moment Dane realized in the ocean that he could no longer swim back to a boat without his daughter's help.
Gayheart, 54, now splits her time between caring for Dane—who has round-the-clock nurses after a prolonged insurance battle—and raising their daughters, while also supporting aging parents in Kentucky and restarting her acting career. She describes herself as Dane's "care partner" rather than caregiver, and says her role includes coordinating medical care, covering gaps in nursing shifts, and helping him spend as much time as possible with family. The two live about 12 minutes apart but share frequent meals and visits, which she frames as a way to model for their daughters that "our love may not be romantic, but it's a familial love" and that supporting each other through illness is "the right thing to do."
Public attention has added strain: Gayheart recounts struggling with Dane's wheelchair in a restaurant parking lot while onlookers filmed, and managing social-media messages directed at their daughters. She says she's learned who shows up in a crisis and who quietly disappears, but tries not to hold grudges. Amid "anticipatory grief," she is working, in therapy, to examine her own emotions, while urging her daughters not to abandon their lives or happiness. She admits to holding a slim hope that fast-moving medical research might yield an ALS treatment—while reminding herself, and them, to use their time now: "This is not the dress rehearsal. ... Whatever you're doing today, that is your life." Read her full essay at The Cut.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
