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Profiles: Celebrity
Well-known public figures with CFIDS include Laura
Hillenbrand, Michelle
Akers, Amy
Peterson, Keith Jarrett and Jackson Parkhurst. These individuals have been willing to raise awareness
of this devastating illness by speaking out about how it has affected their lives and careers.
Laura Hillenbrand
, author of the
best-selling book “Seabiscuit: An American Legend,” has been battling CFIDS for
the past 16 years. Hillenbrand took four years to write Seabiscuit due to her
illness and has talked publicly about the price her body has paid to complete
it. She has helped raise awareness of the illness through hundreds of interviews
for print, broadcast and radio media. She is serving as a consultant to the
producers of the full-length feature film based on the book that stars Tobey
Maguire and Jeff Bridges. The movie is set to be released July 25,
2003.
Michelle
Akers
, star of the U.S. women's soccer team, has acknowledged publicly the
extraordinary
adjustments she has made in her life to be able to play despite her CFIDS, and that has led to extensive
media coverage of the illness. In August of 2000, Akers stepped down from the U.S. Olympic team due in
part to "a weariness of the constant maintenance of CFIDS necessary in order to be able to perform at
the international level."
Other athletes have struggled with CFIDS,
including speedskater Amy
Peterson, a five-time Olympian, who
was recently interviewed on the TODAY Show about the challenges that CFIDS has
posed. Peterson was a medal winner in the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics and has
been outspoken about her difficult comeback road following the onset of CFIDS
five years ago. She competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics, but did not win a
medal.
Keith
Jarrett
, one of the world's most popular jazz pianists, has spent
more than four
years living with CFIDS. He became ill during a 1996 concert tour in Italy, cancelled all his concert
dates, and went home to rural New Jersey to focus on getting better. He has now begun performing and recording
again, but acknowledges that he is still recovering.
Former symphony conductor Jackson Parkhurst is still
hoping for recovery. In the early 1990's, Parkhurst was conducting 65 to 70 concerts a year for the North
Carolina Symphony. He developed CFIDS in 1993, and a severe exacerbation of the illness during a concert
in 1995 made him realize that he could no longer keep conducting.
See the media coverage section
of
www.cfids.org for recent articles about celebrities who have CFIDS.
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