Ozzy Osbourne announced for the first time that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday morning.
“It’s been terribly challenging for us all,” he told “GMA’s” Robin Roberts. “I did my last show New Year’s Eve at the Forum. Then I had a bad fall. I had to have surgery on my neck, which screwed all my nerves.”
The Black Sabbath singer had to cancel his tour last October due to health problems, and has continued to struggle behind closed doors since.
“I got a numbness down this arm for the surgery, my legs keep going cold,” Osbourne said. “I don’t know if that’s the Parkinson’s or what, you know, but that’s — see, that’s the problem. Because they cut nerves when they did the surgery. I’d never heard of nerve pain, and it’s a weird feeling.”
The “Iron Man” rocker was joined on “GMA” by his wife and manager, Sharon, and his children, Jack and Kelly.
“It’s PRKN 2,” Sharon explained. “There’s so many different types of Parkinson’s. Tt’s not a death sentence by any stretch of the imagination, but it does affect certain nerves in your body. And it’s — it’s like you have a good day, a good day, and then a really bad day.”
Ozzy has been keeping his diagnosis to himself, but he says he’s ready to speak openly about it now.
“I’m no good with secrets. I cannot walk around with it anymore ’cause it’s like I’m running out of excuses, you know?” he said.
His daughter Kelly said the “hardest thing” about her father’s illness is “watching somebody that you love suffer.”
“It’s kind of become a bit of — I think a role reversal for us, where we have to be like, ‘Snap out of it. Come on we — we have to all admit what’s happening here,’ so that we can get over this. And it took a while for everyone to be on the same page,” she said.
Watch the video above.