Eric Dane’s final words to his fans have arrived. The late Grey’s Anatomy and Euphoria star’s memoir, My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments, hit shelves on Tuesday, and it reveals that doctors first told him he had a treatable illness months before he learned he had ALS.

Months of Tests and a Hopeful First Answer

Dane writes that his first warning sign was slowly losing the use of his right hand. He describes being passed from one hand specialist to another before landing with a neurologist, who suspected some form of neuropathy but felt the case was beyond his expertise and referred him on.

After a string of doctors and tests, including an electromyography (EMG) scan, his medical team settled on multifocal motor neuropathy, a rare autoimmune condition that causes severe muscle weakness. Dane notes that the treatment for it works around 90 percent of the time, which gave him real hope.

When the Treatment Didn’t Work

That hope faded when Dane didn’t respond to treatment, and he says his doctors became scared. His primary care doctor then told him the team had been discussing ALS, but that they would have to wait and see. Frustrated, the actor went through a lumbar puncture, spinal fluid testing and brain scans before finally being diagnosed with ALS in 2024, nine months after his symptoms began. In the book, he calls the diagnosis a “death sentence” and compares the experience to a horror movie.

He went public with his illness the following April. Dane died in February at age 53.

The Call to Rebecca Gayheart

One of the memoir’s most emotional passages describes Dane calling his estranged wife, Rebecca Gayheart, after the diagnosis. The pair, who split in 2018 after more than a decade of marriage, share daughters Billie, 16, and Georgia, 14. Dane writes that telling her it was what they had feared felt like having the wind knocked out of him, and that they both broke down on the phone.

Gayheart recently said that if she could speak to Dane now, she would promise to look after their girls and protect them with everything she has.

Source: Page Six