The Heartbreak of TickledyBumptyBoom

Now, I hope it isn't this, but it is a coincidence that you and Annette Funicello were both in the movie "Head," and you both ended up with MS.

We were in another movie together, too. Oh, man, a bad one, too. "Pajama Party."

But there's a lot of people that I went to high school with [who have MS], around where I live [now]. They don't know if it's from where you lived. Or from just thinking bad thoughts.

Well, look, I'm not a doctor. I don't have a clue. But I love that researchers are out there, God bless them, trying to figure it out. And trying not only to slow the progression but stop it and get us back some of the stuff we've lost, some of the nerves and movements for people that are much more debilitated than I am. And then to find out that nobody ever gets this anymore, find . . . a vaccine for it would be great, too. It's all in the future. I really have hope for it.

Look at what we're doing now. Ten years ago there wasn't even any of this. We now have choices. We now have medicines, we have better ways to diagnose it. I count this as a very hopeful thing, a very positive thing. It's escalating, it's getting faster and faster that they're learning about this disease.

I'm just glad when people say they're taking medicines. So many people that I meet on the road will say, "Oh, I was diagnosed," and I say, "Oh, well, are you taking medicine?" And they say, "No, my doctor says I'm doing okay and I don't need to." That's the thing that we have to say, "No, if you have a diagnosis, you need to take something. Because you're going to slow the progression." I don't know what's with these doctors that say, "You have no symptoms right now, you're okay, so don't take anything."

Getting the information out there is slow. It's amazing, isn't it, that even doctors don't know this? So I'm glad to see that anybody's taking anything.

How old are your kids?

I just have one [a girl], who's 10. And that's enough.

I like [having] a little mind to form and say, you know, MS is not so bad. The rest of the world can have a big bad attitude about it, but we don't.