(NewsNation) — “Grey’s Anatomy” actor Eric Dane is receiving around-the-clock care amid his worsening amyotrophic lateral sclerosis diagnosis, his wife Rebecca Gayheart revealed.
In an essay for The Cut, his estranged wife said, “Eric has 24/7 nurses now.”
“Just figuring out the health-care system is its own thing — the health-insurance company will deny you what you’re asking for and you have to appeal and then you have to apply again,” Gayheart wrote.
Adding, “With the nurses, the woman from his insurance said to me, ‘You can keep applying, and I’ll keep denying, I was like, ‘Oh? F that.’ I made it my mission. I was ‘locked in.’”
She said that after successful appeals, he was approved for care and that “the week is divided into 21 shifts,” where she sometimes needs to cover for staff.
Eric Dane, Rebecca Gayheart still legally married
Gayheart and Dane separated in September 2017 but are still married and remain close, raising their two daughters, Billie, 15, and Georgia, 14.
She said Dane started to show symptoms a year before he was officially diagnosed with ALS.
“His symptoms started maybe a year prior. When we would have a meal with the kids, he’d say things like, ‘Something’s wrong with my hand,”’ the actress wrote. “He was struggling to use his chopsticks, dropping his food. That was when he started seeing doctors.”
Eric Dane reveals ALS diagnosis
Dane was diagnosed in April after he went through nine months of testing for symptoms that started around a year and a half ago. His first symptom was weakness in his right hand.
During an interview with Diane Sawyer for “Good Morning America,” he said, “I thought maybe I’d been texting too much, or my hand was fatigued, but a few weeks later, I noticed it got a little worse.”
Continuing, “So, I went and saw a hand specialist, who sent me to another hand specialist. I went and saw a neurologist, and the neurologist sent me to another neurologist and said, ‘This is way above my pay grade.”
The “Euphoria” actor told Sawyer that he and Gayheart became better friends and parents amid his ALS fight.
“She is probably my biggest champion and my most stalwart supporter, and I lean on her,” he told Sawyer.
The “Urban Legend” actress and Dane married in 2004 and split up in 2018, when she filed for divorce. However, in March of this year, Gayheart moved to dismiss the divorce filing, according to People magazine.
NewsNation’s Sierra Campbell contributed to this report