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 Part 2
Misty McMichael – Heart of Gold

     ALS stands for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and yet it is commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease and was named after the famous New York Yankees baseball player who retired after developing the disease in 1939. The word “amyotrophic” comes from Greek roots that mean “without nourishment to muscles.” “Lateral” means, “to the side,” and refers to the location of the damage in the spinal cord. And sclerosis means the abnormal hardening of body tissue. There is no cure for the different types of ALS.  

     Steve Smith, the former Raiders fullback lived almost a full 2 decades after his diagnosis of ALS. Matt Toole, a Chicago engineer, just passed last March of 2022, and he lived with it for 18 years. But one of Misty’s friend’s, Kelly, lost her husband, Tom Salzburg, to his battle with ALS after only 8 months. Tom had the “bad kind” of ALS. He had Bulbar ALS, and it affects the throat area first. Speech, swallowing, and breathing goes first. And then the limbs.

A Lesson in Navigating: ALS Increased Awareness

     The three forms of ALS are, 1) Bulbar, which I have already mentioned, and it moves very fast. Then there’s 2) “Familial ALS” (FALS) and it represents only 10% of the total ALS cases. It pops up in people who have more than one person in the family that has ALS and sometimes family members have frontal to temporal dementia with Familial ALS as well. 3) Limb Onset ALS is the most common form of ALS, and it usually starts in the limbs with muscle cramps, stiffness, twitching or weakness. That’s the kind Steve has. But there are variations of Limb Onset ALS that move slower through the body. Steve Mongo McMichael didn’t get the slow form of Limb Onset ALS.

     Steven Hawking, the famous physicist & author, lived with ALS for over 21 years. He had a slow form of Limb Onset. And he had the funds to add years to his life. Misty informed me that no “regular person” could ever afford to stay alive that long with this disease. To those in the know and who are affected by ALS, you would soon have learnt that it’s called the “poor man’s disease” because it will break you. Financially. In Misty’s ALS support circles she was told the more money you have will directly affect how long you will be able to live with the disease. According to the Huffington Post, ALS can cost an estimated $300,000 a year and the majority of the families of ALS patients will end up filing for bankruptcy. And even though Steve was a successful athlete with adoring and giving fans, associates, and friends, both Steve and Misty were financially wiped out and taken to the brink of financial ruin.

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In the beginning, before Steve McMichael was diagnosed with ALS, he had Blue Cross Blue Shield which covered a lot of stuff. But when Steve Mongo McMichael officially got his ALS diagnosis, he was automatically qualified for Medicare, even though he was not 65. And what Blue Cross Blue Shield neglected to tell Misty and Steve was that when the Medicare kicked in, Steve was instantly not allowed to have other primary insurances. So Blue Cross Blue Shield unceremoniously, and without much notice, kicked him off their protection plan. Misty and Steve were not only surprised but then they were horrified when they became stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills that they did not expect to have to pay. And because Steve became too sick to do so, Misty had to learn to become an insurance expert and hunt and find him a special secondary insurance that would help cover the other 20% of their current medical bills that Medicare would not cover. With ALS you must learn a lot, in a short amount of time, or you’ll go broke very fast.

And yet, now, Misty would tell anyone that things are no longer as bad, financially, for Steve and herself. She told me that she was currently in a state of mind where she could look back and appreciate what Steve and she had gone through as well as where they were going. The fact that she was strong enough to share her story, and that she thought it could help other people, seemed like it was a good thing to her. Even if when she told me she brought tears to my eyes along with a few of those special laughs that are the best because they came from the tears.

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     In the beginning, before Steve McMichael was diagnosed with ALS, he had Blue Cross Blue Shield which covered a lot of stuff. But when Steve Mongo McMichael officially got his ALS diagnosis, he was automatically qualified for Medicare, even though he was not 65. And what Blue Cross Blue Shield neglected to tell Misty and Steve was that when the Medicare kicked in, Steve was instantly not allowed to have other primary insurances. So Blue Cross Blue Shield unceremoniously, and without much notice, kicked him off their protection plan. Misty and Steve were not only surprised but then they were horrified when they became stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills that they did not expect to have to pay. And because Steve became too sick to do so, Misty had to learn to become an insurance expert and hunt and find him a special secondary insurance that would help cover the other 20% of their current medical bills that Medicare would not cover. With ALS you must learn a lot, in a short amount of time, or you’ll go broke very fast.

     And yet, now, Misty would tell anyone that things are no longer as bad, financially, for Steve and herself. She told me that she was currently in a state of mind where she could look back and appreciate what Steve and she had gone through as well as where they were going. The fact that she was strong enough to share her story, and that she thought it could help other people, seemed like it was a good thing to her. Even if when she told me she brought tears to my eyes along with a few of those special laughs that are the best because they came from the tears.

The NFL and ALS: A Battle Beyond the Field

     One time Misty made me whole-heartedly laugh because when she first started dating Steve, she thought he was out of work and broke. She told her daddy that she had probably already fallen in love with another penniless man whom she was going to have to support, again, just like her first husband. When she first met Steve, he had just broken his arm and he simply told her that he was taking a break from his work. What he neglected to tell her he was one of the 1985/86 Chicago Bears and, at that time, also a WWF super star wrestler.

     While he was still “on a break,” Misty was still working for her ex-husband’s brother who owned a strip-o-gram service. And Steve offered to go with Misty on a few gigs where his official job at those gigs would be what Misty called a “cooler.” Which means he was her bodyguard. Misty thought he was so sweet for offering to be her cooler because Steve was the first guy who didn’t charge anything to do that for her.

     The first call was a regular strip-o-gram job. The guy she was going to entertain was retiring or leaving his place of employment, so his workmates chipped in for a strip-o-gram for him at his company. It was an easy gig. One or two quick songs, wiggle, wiggle, and go. That little show wasn’t so bad for Steve, she thought. Especially since everyone at that place seemed to like him. She had no idea why, other than he was always very charismatic.

Misty McMichael: A Beacon of Love and ALS Awareness

     And then there was another gig where she had to strip-o-gram for a bunch of men who were deaf. There were about 10 guys, and it was at one of the guy’s personal homes. Now, the thing about stripping and dancing for a bunch of deaf guys, other than the fact that that the music was just for her, was the fact that they grunt and growl because they can’t hear themselves. They didn’t mean to be indiscreet. “Hearing-guys” may want to make noises, but they usually didn’t because they wouldn’t want to sound creepy in front of their friends, and maybe they also didn’t want to freak out the strippers. But when she was performing her act for the def men, it wasn’t just their grunts that made Misty start to feel uncomfortable. It was the fact that they were also signing to each other. A lot.

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The entire time that Misty was performing, Steve was strategically looking on from an adjoining room, just in case he had to cool things down. He could easily and most certainly see the guys she was dancing for, and these same guys were also, occasionally & indiscreetly, looking back at Steve, which just added another level of where-the-f*ck-is-this-going? as they ramped up their frenetic signing. Steve was also close enough so that he could absolutely hear this group who were, she thought, getting too hot for her while still also possibly just afraid enough of what Steve might do to them if they decided to rush her. Misty kept dancing because she still felt safe enough with Steve looking on.

Embracing a New Mission: From NFL Fame to ALS Advocacy

Yet, after a while, Misty began to get annoyed because the noisy signing group began to pay more attention to Steve in the other room than her. In fact, she noticed the men were hardly paying attention to Misty at all, even though it was her job was to entertain them. Exasperated, she cut her performance down to two songs because her talents seemed lost on her inattentive audience anyway. After her last “ta-da,” instead of claps and cheers, and tips, which she was used to, the group quickly rushed Steve to get his autograph. It turns out the men had been signing to each other the whole time that Steve McMichael, the Chicago Bear and WWF Wrestler, was in their presence. The grunts that Misty had heard from the group were not for her. They were for Steve!

After autographs were signed and the couple walked out of that man’s home, Steve told Misty who he was, and she thought about that for a minute.

 “Okay,” she said, after getting into the car. “Why don’t I just keep my clothes on, and you can make us both money by going to your autograph signings or whatever. I think we’ll make more money.”

And he said, “Okay, let’s do that.”

     And that’s when Misty quit stripping and started to prep herself for what she thought she would become for the rest of her life: A “normal wife,” and, eventually, a mother, with a “normal life.” She did become a wife. And a mother. But nothing in Misty and Steve’s life was ever normal. Misty recalls that it was a weird life dating and then marrying a newly divorced Wrestler who was also a TV personality. But Steve loved and appreciated his job, his fans, and the people he worked with. So, she embraced it.

Advocating for ALS Awareness and Navigating ALS Caregiving

     Shortly before Misty and Steve were officially married, Misty began traveling with Steve when he began wrestling again. They both moved to Florida where most of the World Wrestling Federation wrestlers lived. It was there that Misty began a long period of adjustment to Steve’s weird life while trying to be a normal wife.

     Vince McMahan, the owner of the WWF, had heard that Steve’s newly ex-wife, Debra, had run off to marry Steve Austin, another WWF wrestler, in fact, a rival wrester of Steve’s. Debra had even got married to Steve Austin at the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas; the same chapel she made Steve get married to her in years before. And Vince smelled publicity entertainment gold and offered Misty and Steve lot of money to wrestle Debra and Steve Austin in a double tag team match. But Misty emphatically passed on the invitation and the money to wrestle with her husband. It was enough to have cameras shoved in her face whenever she was with him on the road.

The Misty McMichael Story is Episode 7 of this new short story podcast.

    In those early years of their marriage Misty didn’t think Steve fully appreciated that she was content with just being his woman and his Mrs. He always chided her to dress up, be showier, and to get in on some of the camera action with him before and after his wrestling matches on TV. He even suggested to her to try out for Mrs. Illinois, like his first wife Debra had.  Debra, Steve’s ex, was a famous wrestler and a celebrity in her own right. And she held more than one pageant title. In her heyday, when she was still married to Steve, Debra was a savvy self-branding woman who went after whatever she wanted. And Misty struggled with feeling like she had to compete or be compared to Debra because Steve was used to a partner in the spotlight. But, over time, Misty learned how to express to Steve that she would not ever welcome the public spotlight to shine on herself, or their daughter. It had been, occasionally, fun to be married to a celebrity. But mostly it was a cross to bear, Misty told me. Especially when she was trying to settle down and raise a kid and have as close to a normal life as she could. But conversely, those years of being pushed into the media’s gaze, as well as her pushing back, helped Misty to learn to speak her own truth. She also learned to become a lioness for her family.

Understanding ALS: A Path Towards Increased Awareness

     Since Misty and Steve have been together, she realized the public has always had a bit of an interest in her because both Steve and his first wife were both “out there.” And she did admit that she did pick up a few skills from being a reluctant public figure. She learned how to address media without giving away her private life. And she learned how to embrace the limelight for good causes. These are skills that she is less reluctant to use, more and more, because she is now championing her husband to get into the NFL Hall of Fame. And she is also following in her husband’s footsteps (in her own way) by helping other people affected by ALS. Misty has most recently thrown out the first pitch at a Cubs Game on the 2^nd Annual ALS Day. She was a special guest in October of 2022 at an MDA fundraiser, and she was honored at the Les Turner Gala and The Chicago Bears Homecoming. And now she is now associated with The Great Iron Greats Run by the Mike Ditka’s.

     This is not a career choice, Misty told me. She accepted her weird life with Steve because it was also magical and fantastical for a lot of years until things got “real.” But now it was clear that she had mission to help other people with ALS. This is what she thinks she is supposed to do.

A Life of Love, Advocacy, and Resilience

     Misty points out to me that, at times, their lives together were downright wholesome compared to the lives both she and Steve had lived before they had ever met each other. But that her life was never normal, and that it was not all because of Steve. When Misty was still pregnant, Steve had just finished doing a Charity Golf tournament for underprivileged kids while she was getting into trouble in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Misty was driving with the photographer who had taken pictures of the event to a place to have the film developed. Misty was driving too fast, so she got pulled over. The police officer who pulled her over asked if he could search the car and she could not think of a reason why he could not. She knew she didn’t have any pot in the car. (Which was illegal at the time.) What Misty didn’t know was that Steve had one of his guns under the seat as well as a joint of his own in the glove box.

     The cop found the gun and the pot, so he immediately hauled Misty McMichael off to the pokey. By the time Steve came to get her out of jail, Misty’s face was plastered all over the news and the headlines called her the “Pistol Packing Mama.”

The Financial Toll of ALS and the Power of Support

    Unfortunately, Misty’s OBGYN happened to be watching the news that night and she immediately called Misty at home to inform her that she was going to test Misty for pot for the rest of her pregnancy. And that if Misty tested positive, even once, then the OBGYN would take her baby from me. Misty had not been smoking pot at all during her pregnancy, but the threat scared the shit out of her, and she felt guilty every time she visited her OBGYN until she had her healthy baby girl, Macy.

     Misty is thankful that pot is legal now. She allows herself to smoke a joint, every once in a while, to take the pressure off and to escape her current situation of watching her husband lose the remaining time he has left on earth. But pot is still only a rare luxury, and she can only do it when the full time nurse is in the house along with Steve’s brother, Richard, who helps them both. Misty tells me that she has to stay vigilant and aware of my husband’s needs at all times. Richard, and Steve’s sisters, Kathy and Shery, help Misty whenever they can.

End of Part 2 of 4.  Click Below for Part 3.

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