COURAGEOUS actor Michael York has been secretly battling a rare, killer blood disorder and friends fear he’s nearing the end.
“We’re afraid Michael’s dying,” says a longtime pal. “We all knew by his appearance there was something serious going on, but he didn’t talk about it.
“Michael always seemed boyish. But these last couple of years he appears to have become an old man who’s in constant pain.”
The 71-year-old British actor is suffering from amyloidosis, a debilitating and possibly lethal blood disorder that deposits abnormal proteins throughout the body and breaks down tissue.
York, who starred as D’Artagnan in the 1973 hit “The Three Musketeers”, underwent an unusual stem-cell transplant at the famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., followed by chemotherapy treatments that made his hair fall out.
But he says he believes he’s beating the disease.