Soap Star Makes Als Part Of Character

Sitting on a quiet, tree-lined patio in rural Roxbury, Conn., actor Michael Zaslow recalls the day he returned to the set of the ABC soap opera "One Life To Live."

Zaslow types the words into a black laptop computer, and when he pushes a button, an electronic voice speaks them.

"There was a sign saying `Welcome Home Michael.' They left it up for weeks."

Zaslow lost his voice shortly after being diagnosed at the end of last year with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The loss is a consequence of the degenerative nature of ALS.

He also uses a wheelchair and types with one hand while the other sits nearly motionless on his lap.

Despite this, Zaslow has returned to his role as David Renaldi, the concert pianist. Renaldi, like Zaslow, has ALS and returns to his former life changed by the disease, but still the same man.

The actor has enjoyed the support of longtime friends and soap-opera colleagues such as Robin Strasser, who plays Dorian Lord Hayes, Renaldi's wife, and there are others, too. "It was the actors I worked with whom (I didn't know) that bowled me over with love," he says.

The voice of the laptop is the same one that speaks Zaslow's lines as Renaldi. It has helped him resume his career and communicate without his voice. But, like all computers, it can be a curse at times. After one painstakingly typed answer, he accidentally hit the clear button, and the message disappeared.

Then he typed: "Frustrating - to the max."

At their home in Roxbury, a refuge from the hectic pace of their life in New York, Susan Hufford, Zaslow's wife, picks up where the computer sometimes leaves off. They scribble notes to each other, and she can read his expressions and tell what he is trying to say or do. They live with their two teenage daughters, Marika and Helena.

Zaslow is battling the disease with a combination of conventional and alternative treatments, and with physical therapy. He works with a physical trainer four days a week and takes heavy-duty anti-oxidants intravenously. He watches his diet and takes vitamin supplements. He also participates in a trial at Johns Hopkins Hospital of a new drug for ALS called Sanofi. There is no cure for ALS, which attacks the nervous system.

"We are beginning to notice substantial improvement on his left side, where the disease is stronger. A lot of neurologists will tell you that doesn't happen, but it does," says Hufford, who credits Zaslow's New York neurologist, Dr. Jay Lombard, with being open to alternative treatments.

They are capitalizing on Zaslow's return to television this year to bring increased visibility to ALS and to raise money for a cure. The couple formed ZazAngels, a fund-raising group whose goal is to raise $2 million for ALS research by 2000.

Before his return to ABC, Zaslow played the villainous Roger Thorpe on the CBS soap opera "The Guiding Light," for which he won an Emmy in 1994.

He began having trouble speaking his lines in early 1997, and at one point he found himself unable to speak the phrase, "I'm not that man anymore." It was the beginning of his journey into ALS and the end of his career as Roger Thorpe.

The producers dropped Zaslow from the show a short time later. (He sued, and they settled out of court.)

At that point, Zaslow went to a series of specialists, finally ending up in Houston, where he had tests that confirmed he had ALS.

While in Houston, he had the idea of returning to "One Life To Live" as a character with ALS. Zaslow had played David Renaldi from 1983 to 1986. He approached the show's executive producers, and they agreed. "It was a love-fest," Zaslow says.

He started work again on "One Life to Live," in May.