Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Talks On His Leukemia, His Young Feet, DWTS Rehearsals, And More

People has such a cool piece with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Did you know he has Leukemia? He does….but, that’s not stopping him from doing Dancing With The Stars (or anything for that matter!). He also talks of what rehearsals have been like for Dancing With The Stars. Check out below for what he says on his FEET …and I believe it. I love this Guy. Can you tell? Be sure to read the People link for the inspiring read. It’s a goodie!

“With Leukemia, you’re not technically in remission,” Abdul-Jabbar tells PEOPLE now. “It’s possible for it to reassert itself. In my case, what we say is I’ve managed it down to a microscopic level. There are no bad white blood cells. and that’s how we discuss the type of management that I do, which enables me to say that I’m healthy.”

Abdul-Jabbar says he feels “very lucky” to be a survivor and well enough to compete on the upcoming all-athletes season of Dancing with the Stars, which premieres April 30.

“I feel fine, and I’m very fortunate to benefit from the medical research that enable the targeted drugs to deal with the types of leukemia that I possess,” he says. “I’m very happy to be here and very happy to be participating.”

“I try to enjoy my life,” he continues. “I’m just trying to hang on here, and every day is blessing.”

On DWTS, Abdul-Jabbar is partnered with Lindsay Arnold, who won last season with Jordan Fisher, and says that even though he has “old bones,” he has “young feet.”

“It started out that I had to get my feet in shape,” he says. “I haven’t worked out like that ever. Basketball practice, you do it on your feet just like dance practice — it’s a little bit different, but you’re stretching your feet the same. It took me a couple of days to get used to that, and now it seems to be going very well. Lindsay had my shoes altered a little bit, they stretched them for me. They were a little more broken in, and now I’m doing fine.”

Abdul-Jabbar says the rehearsal process has been “very humbling” for him but that he’s “making progress.”

“It looks so simple and easily done, but when you’re trying to coordinate two people, it takes a while for both of them to learn each other’s coordinating moves and how to proceed through the sequence of things,” he says. “All of the dances [I’ve seen] throughout my life make it look so thoughtless and easy, and I can see how much work it is to pull it off — wow.”

Though Abdul-Jabbar stands at a towering 7’2″ compared to Arnold’s 5’6″, he says they’ve worked around the height difference by choosing a routine that doesn’t emphasize the discrepancy. “That’s the whole trick to this at this point,” he says.