Sports Radio Interviews

Brian Grant Has Young Onset Parkinson’s Disease

It’s really difficult to write about a young person going through such a dramatic turn of events in his life.  I mean, what is there to say?  It is truly sad and takes one’s breath away to hear about a former athlete who’s been diagnosed with an incurable disease at such a young age.  Brian Grant is 37-years-old and was living a normal life until he started noticing his trembling hand.  It means absolutely nothing that he was a healthy, athletic individual.  The former NBA forward tells his dramatic story below on  KFXX in Portland.  Grant discusses not going out in public because of Parkinson’s, his biggest fear, why he went public with his disease, and the conversations he had with the families of Muhammad Ali and Michael J. Fox.

When he first noticed signs:

“Once I did retire, I went into a heavy state of depression and I know now that a lot of times, depression is an indicator that Parkinson’s is on the way or that you’ve already began to start symptoms.  Once I went into the doctor of Miami, he told me that he was more concerned with it being a part of depression, having the tremors from depression, so I didn’t think anything of it.  Once I got back to Portland, Oregon, and things started to really settle down in my life, the tremor increased.  I went and met with Dr. Nut and he told me that I had Young Onset Parkinson’s.”

What went through his head when he was diagnosed:

“The first thing that went through my mind because I went and got on the scale before he told me what it was, was that the scale was wrong because I know I don’t weigh that much.  I had put on some weight.  It was kind of funny, he’s sitting there and telling me I have Parkinson’s.  I’m looking out the window and he asks me if I’m alright and I tell him, ‘You need to get your scale fixed.’  After I left the building, I was pretty much wondering, ‘What am I going to do now? What do I need to do now?’… I needed to be proactive, I needed to be able to attack it but I had absolutely no idea what Parkinson’s was, what caused it, and what I could do about it.  That’s when I took the naturopathic way.”

Why he went public:

“I was tired of not being able to go out in public without worrying about somebody seeing my tremor… Any situation, especially if I got nervous, then I was always trying to hide my hand, I was always putting it in my pocket.  On top of that, I had local news stations asking me to do certain things and I was constantly turning people down.  I began to worry that people were beginning to think I was too good to do the job, which wasn’t the case.  I just didn’t know how to explain to them what the tremor was.  I wasn’t ready to deal with it yet.  After a while, sitting around doing nothing and actually just being bound up by it, I decided to take the steps and go ahead and go public with it.”

What the Ali and Fox families told him:

“[The Ali’s] gave me pretty good advice about going the naturopathic way… They actually told me what Muhammed’s regime was daily and what he’s been dealing with over the past 20, 30 years.  With Michael J., it was more or less a conversation about family, about how do I feel and about not letting Parkinson’s keep me down.  To rise up and realize I have a platform built on the NBA to really be out there and reach a lot of people and inform them about Parkinson’s and see if they want to help.  It was good.”

His biggest fear:

“Sometimes when you are around a lot of different people who are dealing with Parkinson’s at different stages, it’s really an eye opener because you see some people who have been dealing with it for 10 or 12 years and you don’t see any signs of tremors or symptoms of Parkinson’s.  Then there are some people who are only dealing with it for 4 years and have very pronounced symptoms of it… Sometimes I look at that and I think, ‘Man I don’t really want to get to that point.”

Listen to Brian Grant on KFXX in Portland with Isaac and Big Suke

Tags: Basketball, Brian Grant, NBA