A month after announcing that he had Parkinson's disease during an appearance on "Good Morning America" , Ozzy Osbourne has now revealed to the Los Angeles Times that it was actually first diagnosed back in 2003.
"I'm not dying from Parkinson's. I've been working with it most of my life," the legendary heavy metal singer said in a new interview. "I've cheated death so many times. If tomorrow you read ' Ozzy Osbourne never woke up this morning,' you wouldn't go, 'Oh, my God!' You'd go, 'Well, it finally caught up with him.'"
Ozzy , who noted the medication he takes for tremors can cause short-term memory loss, hopes to resume his solo farewell tour later this year. He had neck surgery to correct an old injury that he aggravated early last year, forcing him to stay off the road for all of 2019.
"It's been a pretty incredible, interesting career," he told the Los Angeles Times . "People have written me off time and time again, but I kept coming back and I'm going to come back from this.
"When? I don't know," he said. About returning to the live stage, he added: "I don't want to go back out there until I'm ready."
The BLACK SABBATH frontman's wife Sharon explained in an interview on "Good Morning America" that Ozzy has "PRKN 2, which is a form of Parkinson's. There's so many different types of Parkinson's. It's not a death sentence by any stretch of the imagination, but it does affect certain nerves in your body. It's like you have a good day, a good day and then a really bad day."
Ozzy will head to Switzerland in April to see a specialist about his condition, and is then scheduled to resume the North American leg of tour this spring. His first new solo album in 10 years, "Ordinary Man" , is due for release on February 21.
Ozzy added he has been experiencing other symptoms that may or may not stem from Parkinson's, saying, "I got a numbness down this arm for the surgery; my legs keep going cold. 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."
Fifteen years ago, Ozzy said that he had been diagnosed with Parkin syndrome, a genetic condition which has symptoms similar to that of Parkinson's disease, such as body shakes. At the time, he said that he was relieved his debilitating body tremors were from Parkin and not his lifetime of drug abuse.
He said in a May 2005 interview: "I'd always assumed it was the booze and stuff. Now I've found it all stems from the family. It's called Parkin but it's not Parkinson's. Anything to do with the central nervous system has the word Parkin in it.
"A doctor in Los Angeles tried to tell me I had multiple sclerosis. And I believed him until I had a second opinion. When I told my sister, she said, 'Not you as well? Mum had that and Auntie Elsie and your grandma.' I'm, like, 'Thanks for fucking telling me'. Me walking around thinking I've got some drug paralysis."
Last month, Ozzy told U.K.'s Kerrang! magazine that he thinks about death a lot, but he doesn't worry about it. "I won't be here in another 15 years or whatever, not that much longer, but I don't dwell on it," he explained. "It's gonna happen to us all.
"Am I happy now? No. I haven't got my health," he continued. "That thing knocked the shit out of me, man, but I'm still here. In fact, I worried about [death] more when I was younger than I do now. I just try to enjoy things as much as possible, even though that's so fucking hard sometimes."
