TV Host’s Fight Against MS More Than Just Talk

The last time I interviewed Montel Williams, five years ago, he was on top of the world.

He was an actor, producer, writer, director, entrepreneur and motivational speaker. He was an imposing figure, 6 feet tall and 200 pounds with 18-inch biceps and a 33-inch waist. He had his own daytime talk show and his own prime-time drama, and he’d just written his autobiography, “Mountain, Get Out of My Way!”

The mountain, at that time, was racism. Today, the mountain is multiple sclerosis, a neurological disease I know only too well. I have suffered from it for many years, especially its unpredictability. I can feel fine one day and be unable to move my legs the next.

I have a drawer full of unused, nonrefundable plane tickets, bitter reminders of plans that I made with my fingers crossed. During my good periods, I feel in control of MS; during the bad ones, I know it really controls me. After Williams announced he had MS last year, I wondered how he would handle it.

The answer is, he’s handling it in classic, take-no-prisoners Montel style. “MS picked the wrong person,” he said when he announced he had the disease. “I have a big mouth and I am going to continue flapping it until there is a cure!”

Today, he vows to shove the disease “down America’s throat” until that time. All his royalties from his latest book, “Life Lessons and Reflections,” will go to the Montel Williams MS Foundation.

Question: Which is the bigger mountain, having MS or being a black man in America in 2000?

Answer: I don’t think you can say the two things in the same sentence. Having MS is one of the stiffest challenges I’ve faced in my life, and that’s true whether you’re black, white, Asian or any other race. There are 2.8 million sufferers in this country. It’s one of the toughest diseases because it has its own will. If you’re ever not thinking about it, it reminds you, every single day.

Q: Wait, 2.8 million sufferers? The number usually given is less than half a million.

A: Zogby International, a national polling firm, has come up with this number. Gallup is doing a follow-up poll, which I believe will confirm it. The leading MS organization keeps putting out that very low number because it means MS stays an orphan disease. That means Congress gives drug manufacturers some serious breaks in providing money for research. This is helping companies get very wealthy off those of us who suffer.

Q: Isn’t money for research a good thing?

A: The research isn’t going to find a cure. It’s going for stopgap measures like how to change the delivery system for a drug that at best may slow down the disease a little bit, not stop it or reverse it. Excuse me, but that’s not where the money should go. Look at AIDS. Scientists are looking for a cure and a vaccine. They’re looking to eradicate cancer. There is money to be made in not curing MS.

Q: It’s clear you’re not a fan of “the leading MS organization,” the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

A: Forbes did an article about charitable foundations [Dec. 27, 1999] and they were the least efficient. They’ve made a career out of us being sick. It’s too bad, but in this country, we look at illness as ka-ching, ka-ching, an opportunity to get rich. Well, they’ve made enough money off of me being ill. And illness, by the way, is not weakness.

Q: The symptoms of MS can vary greatly. What are yours?

A: Numbness and tingling, and about 80% of the time I’m in mild pain. But late at night, I’ll be sitting, and when I stand up, the pain in my feet and shins is so intense. Imagine grabbing a hammer and hitting your foot with it. That’s really challenging. But I got tired of crying. Now, I talk to the pain. I tell it it’s not going to stop me.

Q: There are so many treatments that have been suggested for MS, everything from bee stings to magnetic therapy. What are you doing?

A: I follow the traditional methods, but I also seek alternatives. I take human growth hormone. In athletes it builds muscles; the research suggests it may rebuild the nervous system. I’m on hormone replacement. I’ve been an herbalist for years, and I follow a vitamin and herbal regime, and I’m doing very, very well. This past summer, I went to Prague and spent one entire day, 11 hours, in and out of an MRI. One scar that I had six months ago is gone. Something I’m doing is helping my body. I feel as strong today as I did six months before I was diagnosed.

(Five years ago, Williams was angry that with all he had achieved, he had never been profiled by any of the major magazines or interviewed by any of the major TV journalists. “I think to myself,” he said, “wouldn’t it be a trip if I were white? How many magazine covers would I be on? How many TV interviews would I do?” When he announced he had MS, he had all the publicity he could handle.)

Q: Are you angry that it took MS for you to get the attention you felt you deserved?

A: I was angry for a minute, now I’m not.

Q: You seem to have mellowed. You used to scream and shout, slam doors, fire people, hold grudges. You wrote in your first book, “If you burn me, I’ll burn you back, and I’ll make sure it takes you twice as long to heal.”

A: I’m no longer a screamer and a shouter. I’m not as dictatorial. I still hold grudges, hell yes, but not in the same way. I just cut the person off, but I don’t go after him the way I did.

Q: Five years ago, you held yourself up to impossibly hard standards. With all your achievements, you said you felt you hadn’t accomplished anything. Have you cut yourself some slack?

A: Nope. I’m still tremendously hard on myself. I’m running six companies, but if I forget some small detail, I beat myself up for a week.

Q: Don’t your neurologists tell you that stress is not good for MS?

A: They tell me all the time, “Chill, relax, lower your stress,” and I have made some strides in that direction. But there are things going on right now that are exacerbating my stress level.

Q: You’re talking about your divorce from your wife of eight years, Grace Williams.

A: It’s the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with, next to MS. Matrimonial law is designed to ensure that lawyers get paid. Lawyers have to appear to be solving problems, even if the parties involved have solved the problems themselves. In that case, they have to create them. This is especially true with a fish like me.

Q: The tabloids are having a field day with your divorce. They wrote that your wife threw your clothes out of the house and that you cheated on her.

A: The bottom line is, it is in the tabloids. The Enquirer just ran a story last week accusing a minor of being my girlfriend. I had no idea who she was, yet they called her a home wrecker.

Q: Did you ever consider not going public with your disease?

A: Yes, but I had to. Every season, I have to take a physical exam for insurance purposes, and I knew when I mentioned MS to the doctors it would get out. Someone would say something. And, then, one of the tabloids started sniffing around. I thought, “Why should I deny it?” I had just finished making a movie. There were days and nights when my feet and legs hurt so badly, but I got through it. There’s nothing I can’t do.

Q: You know enough about MS to know that that might not be true in five years.

A: I have two answers to that. First, I will always be able to do what I want to do, maybe not in the way I would like to do it. I won’t accept “can’t.” And then, call me a fool, call me ridiculously optimistic, but I believe this disease will be cured in five years--not arrested, but cured. And then we can start to reverse the ravages of it.

Q: That is incredibly optimistic.

A: Hold me to it. Do another interview with me in five more years.

Q: Are you in touch with the other celebrity spokespeople on health issues, such as Christopher Reeve and Michael J. Fox?

A: We all just met and we said we would make sure our foundations share information. We’re all dealing with neurological trauma even though the root causes are different.

Q: Five years ago, you were angry about racism in this country. You said you faced the same issues black men have faced for 200 years and will face for another 200 years. How do you feel about it now?

A: We’re at a place in this nation where all the ills of the past have not been cured, but we’re in a position where hard work--extremely hard work--and knowledge can be a ticket to success for anybody. We have a new generation growing up that disdains us for the hate that has been spewed. Hopefully they can wipe it out so we can finally live up to Martin Luther King’s dream.

* “The Montel Williams Show” airs weekdays at 10 a.m. on KCOP-TV Channel 13 in Los Angeles.