The first time Eric Dane noticed his ALS symptoms was when he suddenly started having trouble using chopsticks at a dinner party with his family.
“I’m eating sushi with my kids and suddenly I can’t handle the chopsticks with my right hand. My hand tingles, then my fingers go numb,” Dane wrote in an excerpt from his posthumous memoir, “My Book of Days,” obtained by People, recalling the first sign of the illness he noticed on Jan. 7, 2024.
The late Grey’s Anatomy actor – who publicly announced his diagnosis a year later, in 2025 – said he initially thought it was “some kind of weird nerve thing” and tried to “get rid of it”, thinking he was “probably texting too much”.
“Three weeks later, it happens again, but worse. I can no longer hold the chopsticks at all,” he wrote.
According to his memoir, the second episode marked the beginning of a nine-month period of “searching for answers” before Dane was diagnosed with ALS by Dr. Mark Terrelonge, associate director of the neurology residency program at the University of California, San Francisco.
“I have been diagnosed with ALS. I am grateful to have my loving family by my side as we enter this next chapter. …I kindly ask that you give my family and I privacy during this time,” Dane announced in 2025.
At the time, he also revealed that he would reprise his role as Cal Jacobs in the third season of “Euphoria.”
He made his first posthumous appearance in the second episode of the HBO series, which aired on April 19, two months after his death on February 19 at the age of 53 following his battle with ALS.
During a June 16, 2025 appearance on “Good Morning America,” Dane opened up about the first symptom he experienced before his diagnosis, saying, “I started feeling some weakness in my right hand, and I didn’t really think about it at the time.
He explained that he thought he “texted too much” or that his “hand was tired,” but “a few weeks later” he noticed that it “got a little worse.”
At the time, Dane also revealed that his dominant right arm had “completely stopped working.”
When Diane Sawyer, now 80, asked him if his left arm was “fine,” he replied, “No, it’s fine,” adding that he estimated he only had “a few months” of use left.
Elsewhere in his memoir, due to be published on November 3, Dane described how his youngest daughter, Georgia, and a friend had to save him from drowning while on vacation.
He said he called his ex-wife, Rebecca Gayheart, and told her: “I can’t swim, Rebecca. …I don’t know how to swim.
“She bursts into tears and I cry with her. We cry together. Eventually the tears slow down to gasps, and when we both scream, Rebecca says, ‘I was afraid of this day. I knew he would come. I was dreading it,” Dane wrote.
He also detailed the devastating call he made to Gayheart to reveal his diagnosis.
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