Marc Maron appeared on the latest episode of Kat Bird Pod where the conversation turned towards Maron’s health. Fresh from visiting two doctors in a single day, Maron opened up about a diagnosis that has been weighing on him: spinal stenosis in both his cervical and lumbar spine.
Maron arrived at the podcast having already seen a French osteopath that morning and a cardiologist in the afternoon. He explained that a full-body scan revealed degenerative changes in his neck and lower back, with stenosis causing compression that affects how nerves travel through the spinal column.
“I have stenosis in my cervical spine and lumbar spine,” he said. “I’ve got degenerative stuff going on just from age.”
The osteopath, who came to Maron’s house and worked on the compressed area of his cervical spine, delivered a moment that clearly hit the comedian hard. After the session, the doctor told Maron that what he was seeing was not the result of a few stressful months.
“Not a couple months,” Maron recalled the practitioner saying in a French accent. “This is a lifetime.” Maron admitted the moment brought him to tears. “I started to tear up a little bit,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, boy.'”
Maron connected the physical diagnosis to something he recognized in himself on stage. He described photos of himself performing as far back as 1992 at the San Francisco Comedy Competition, noting that even then he was sitting in a hunched position with his head down.
“I’ve been doing that forever,” he said. The osteopath told him he carries tension in that way around the clock. “24 hours a day, you’re like that,” Maron recalled being told.
While the cardiologist visit that same day was precautionary, the nerve symptoms that prompted the deeper investigation have been more unsettling. Maron described the sensation as his entire body short-circuiting, and said he had already ruled out MS through testing. The osteopath believes the compression in the upper cervical spine is the source, since that region of the spine connects to the arms and, higher up, to the whole body.
Maron plans to continue treatment, with the osteopath recommending two to three sessions to address the compression. He seemed cautiously hopeful, if still characteristically anxious about the whole situation.
“I’m pretty catastrophic about that kind of stuff,” he told Bird. “So I’m looking for answers.”
