NFL player-turned-actor and television host Terry Crews stood by wife Rebecca King-Crews Monday as they revealed on “Today” that she had been contending with Parkinson’s disease for 11 years.
The two went public with her 2015 diagnosis after King-Crews underwent a recently approved treatment that she said has improved her symptoms markedly.
“I feel good,” King-Crews told “Today” anchor Craig Melvin. “I’m able to write my name and my dates, and I’m able to write with my right hand for the first time in probably three years.”
Parkinson’s is a neurologic disease that reduces motor function due to a lack of dopamine. It afflicts 1 million people in the U.S. alone, with 90,000 new diagnoses a year, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation.
King-Crews is also a breast cancer survivor, having undergone a double mastectomy in 2020. The first intimation of Parkinson’s started as early as 2012, she told “Today,” when she noticed “slight numbness” in her left foot. Soon after, she noticed a tremor, which a doctor dismissed it as anxiety.
She underwent focused ultrasound treatment, which targets clumps of neurons in the brain that are causing tremors and other motor symptoms with just enough heat to destroy them. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first approved the noninvasive procedure in 2018 to treat Parkinson’s tremors that medication could not control. The approval was expanded in 2021 to include other motor symptoms, though it was only permitted for one side of the body. In July 2025 the FDA approved bilateral treatment, to be administered in two sessions at least six months apart.
Crews-King is scheduled for her next session in September, she told Melvin. She shared her story to spread the word in hopes the treatment would become widespread enough to be covered by insurance. The technology has implications for other diseases too.
“I really believe this procedure and others like it are the future of medicine,” she told Melvin on “Today.” “I’m excited about the possibility.”
With News Wire Services