For years, Terry Crews and his wife, Rebecca King Crews, quietly kept a life-changing diagnosis out of the public eye. This week, however, Rebecca shared that she has been living with Parkinson’s disease since 2015, opening up for the first time after a breakthrough treatment helped ease some of her symptoms.
She revealed that the earliest warning signs showed up in 2012, starting with numbness in her left foot during workouts. Over time, it progressed into a noticeable limp, 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.’”
Despite having a family history of tremors—her grandmother and uncle both experienced them—Rebecca King Crews said her symptoms were initially dismissed by doctors. One suggested it was anxiety, while another blamed overtraining. It wasn’t until three years later that a Parkinson’s specialist finally diagnosed her condition.
Rather than go public right away, she chose to keep pushing forward. In the years between her first symptoms and official diagnosis, Rebecca stayed busy writing a book, recording music, and launching her 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.”
Her resilience was tested even further in 2020 when she was also diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. Today, she is cancer-free.
Rebecca decided to finally share her journey after undergoing a newly approved focused ultrasound procedure in March. The treatment uses MRI-guided ultrasound to target areas of the brain linked to movement symptoms. Last year, the FDA expanded its approval, allowing both sides of the brain to be treated in patients with advanced Parkinson’s.
The results have been so impactful that Terry Crews admitted it brought him 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, say they’ve faced the journey side by side from day one. “When they say ‘in sickness and in health,’ this is the battle we were designed to fight together,” Terry shared.
Although Parkinson’s is more commonly diagnosed in men, the Parkinson’s Foundation reports that over 400,000 women in the United States are living with the disease. Women are often diagnosed later, more likely to have their symptoms dismissed as stress-related, and tend to have less access to specialists and clinical trials.
They also frequently report higher levels of anxiety, fatigue, pain, and tremor-dominant symptoms compared to men.
Now, Rebecca says she’s speaking out to offer hope to others. “The only reason I’m going public is because I finally have some uplifting information to offer,” she explained.
Terry echoed that optimism, adding, “We feel hopeful. We really feel like we are on the edge of a cure for Parkinson’s.”
