Rebecca Crews’ Illness Kept Her Silent for 11 Years — Until a Sound Wave Changed Everything

People who suffer from chronic illness are all too familiar with a certain type of morning. The kind where the body’s actions or inactions become too much to bear in silence. Rebecca King Crews had one of those mornings in July of last year. For several nights without getting enough sleep, she was kneeling by her bed, praying, sobbing, and running. By her own admission, she was prepared to die. At that moment, Terry, her husband, entered the room carrying his phone and informed her that he had read something she should know.

Since 2015, Rebecca has had Parkinson’s disease. The majority of people didn’t know. She had kept it a secret for over ten years, not because she was ashamed, as she has stated, but rather because she wasn’t ready to share the diagnosis with the public without offering something encouraging. Terry was explaining to her that the July morning focused ultrasound, a recently FDA-approved treatment that lessens the tremors and physical disruption caused by Parkinson’s disease by using MRI-guided sound waves directed into particular brain tissue. She didn’t respond right away. He brought to mind a story they had both heard in church about a man who prayed to be saved from floodwaters but turned down a boat and then a helicopter because he was waiting for God to take direct action. The man drowned. He was told, “I sent you a boat and a helicopter,” when he arrived in heaven and asked why God had left him. Terry said, “Becky, don’t miss your boat.”

Rebecca King Crews

On April 6, eight months later, Rebecca King Crews appeared on the TODAY show and shared her story in public for the first time. She was calm, methodical, and obviously conscious that the narrative she was telling wasn’t entirely her own. “I feel good,” she declared. “I can write both my name and my dates. For the first time in probably three years, I can write with my right hand.” There was something subtly potent about the specificity of that detail—writing her name—when I watched her talk. not completing a marathon. not going back on stage. simply signing her own name, which she had regained after it had been stolen from her by degrees.

Three years before receiving a definitive diagnosis, her symptoms began in 2012. First, she became aware of a slight numbness in her left foot. Her personal trainer then noticed that when she walked, her arm didn’t swing naturally. Then one morning, when she was at rest, her hand started to tremble. She visited a physician. She was diagnosed with anxiety by the doctor. Nevertheless, motivated by an unidentified feeling that the response she had received was incorrect, she requested referrals to specialists. Before a Parkinson’s specialist realized what was going on, it took three years and several opinions. One of the more subdued annoyances in this narrative is the typical delay between the onset of symptoms and a precise diagnosis for Parkinson’s patients, especially women. She might have lost years of focused treatment as a result of the initial rejection. The question persists even though it is impossible to know for sure.

Her final treatment was administered at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto. It was a five-hour procedure that involved no traditional anesthesia or incisions, only a precisely calibrated array of sound waves directed at the precise area of the brain causing her worst symptoms. The Stanford neurosurgeon who oversaw the procedure, Dr. Vivek Buch, explained that it gives patients back control over the little things that healthy people never think about until they’re gone, like eating, dressing, and holding a pen. Rebecca’s tremors on her left side have greatly improved, but a second round of the procedure is still pending for her right side of the brain. This is because the procedure has been approved for one side of the brain at a time. She talked about seeing the improvements every day and becoming increasingly conscious of how much the treated side had already improved.

When talking about his wife’s journey, Terry Crews—who most people know from Brooklyn Nine-Nine or as the boisterous host of America’s Got Talent—spoke in a more subdued tone. He claimed to have always known she was a superhero. She had fought and conquered cancer in the past. “This is the reason you get married,” he said. The notion that the most intimate and taxing aspects of a marriage take place entirely off camera, unseen by the millions of people watching him host a talent competition in a specially made suit his wife designed, is something worth considering. It serves as a helpful reminder that public figures have private significance that the rest of us seldom witness.

Rebecca claimed that the only reason she made the decision to go public at this time was that she had something positive to share at last. “Just keep going,” she advised. “I believe that you don’t lie down and die because you got a diagnosis.” In the wrong setting, it might sound like a greeting card, but coming from someone who has quietly dealt with tremors, misdiagnoses, sleepless nights, and a body that is gradually refusing to cooperate for years, it carries a different kind of gravity. Hearing her tell it gives me the impression that this story is just getting started and that the most fascinating part might still be to come.