Eric Dane's widow reveals first symptom she noticed months before ALS diagnosis
Eric Dane’s widow Rebecca Gayheart has revealed the very common first symptom she noticed before the actor was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) which he died of earlier this year.
Dane publicly shared his ALS diagnosis in April 2025, revealing that he had been experiencing symptoms for around a year-and-a-half prior.
He died in February this year, aged just 53.
In his posthumously released memoir My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments, the Grey’s Anatomy star said the first warning sign was when he was eating sushi with his daughters one evening and suddenly felt unable to control the chopsticks due to a ‘numb’ feeling in his hands.
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“I'm eating sushi with my kids and suddenly I can't work the chopsticks with my right hand. My hand tingles, and then my fingers feel numb,” he wrote.
Dane said he tried to dismiss the symptom and put it down to ‘texting too much’ only for it to reappear again weeks later and him deciding to get it checked out, which eventually led to his devastating diagnosis.
However, his wife Gayheart, who shared two children with Dane, has now revealed that she spotted a concerning symptom ‘a few months’ prior to him experiencing the numbness in his hands.
Speaking to Drew Barrymore on Personal Space, she shared: “He never once had a headache for all the years we were married or dated.”
But said that he had begun ‘complaining about’ headaches several weeks before he noticed muscle weakness in his hand.
“I was like, ‘Eric, you never get headaches. You’ve never taken an Advil. What are you talking about a headache? You don’t have a headache',” she said.
The 55-year-old said that Dane put the headaches down to sleeping awkwardly, but admitted: “That continued. That was a part of it. So there were definitely signs, but nothing was so major that you would really stop and pay attention to it.”
Gayheart and Dane got married in 2004 and went on to have two children together: Billie, who is now 16, and Georgia, who is 14.
In 2018, Gayheart filed for divorce but she dismissed the filing in March 2025, shortly before Dane went public with diagnosis.
In a heart-wrenching passage in his memoir, Dane detailed the moment he told his estranged wife about his diagnosis, prompting her to reply: “I’m not going anywhere.”
In an interview with PEOPLE, Gayheart said Dane had been apprehensive about writing his autobiography, which also touches on his battles with addiction and his marriage.
But she said she’s ‘grateful’ that he did as the book will be something their daughters can read in the future to help them ‘get to know their dad as a human being’.
Gayheart said that before his death, Dane had wanted to spend as much time as he could with his family to create memories.
“We tried to be present through all of our fear and frustration and uncertainty,” says Gayheart.
“It was truly an exhausting and heartbreaking experience, but it also showed us his extraordinary strength every day, and that was really wonderful for the girls and myself to witness.”
Claire Reid
