Last March the family of actor Bruce Willis announced his retirement due to a diagnosis. The protagonist of ‘Die Hard’ suffered from aphasia, a disease that affected his ability to express himself. After constant speculation, his relatives have revealed that the actor suffers from frontotemporal dementia. This is a group of disorders that gradually damage the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. Like Willis, Ronald Reagan or Sean Connery, they also suffered
Last March the actor’s family Bruce Willis announced his retirement due to a diagnosis. The relatives of the protagonist of ‘The jungle of crystal’ revealed that he suffered aphasia, a disease that caused the loss of ability to express or understand written or spoken language. After constant speculation about the health of the German actor, the family has been forced to confirm through a statement that Willis suffers frontotemporal dementia. “There are no treatments for this disease, a reality that we hope will change in the coming years,” the document read.
The interpreter’s wife Emma Heming has published on her social networks a photograph of her husband accompanied by a long message in which she maintains that “Bruce’s condition has progressed and now we have a more specific diagnosis… Unfortunately, the speech difficulties are only a symptom of the disease that Bruce suffers. Like Heming, his ex-wife Demi Moore has turned to the care of the actor.
What is frontotemporal dementia?
Frontotemporal dementia is a general term for a group of disorders that gradually damage the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. These damages cause alterations in thought and behavior. The symptoms that patients present tend to vary depending on the part that is affected.
The disease usually manifests itself with increasingly inappropriate social behavior, poor judgment, loss of inhibition, decreased personal hygiene, changes in eating habits, or compulsive cravings to put things in the mouth. In addition, movement-related symptoms such as poor coordination, muscle weakness, tremors, spasms o falls.
The actor’s family have called the disease “cruel” and “unknown to many.” It is a disease that usually appears in people under 60 years and that usually appears between 10% and 20% of all diagnoses linked to dementia. “We hope that the media can pay more attention and focus on publicizing this disease, which needs to be further investigated,” the relatives affirm.
From Ronald Reagan to Sean Connery, the other celebrities who suffered from dementia
The former president of the United States Ronald Reagan he began to suffer the first symptoms of the disease when he was still occupying the Oval Office of the White House. It was not until November 5, 1994 when he revealed to his medical team that he suffered from senile dementia, a type of disorder caused by hyaline degeneration, in the form of plaques in the cerebral cortex that later led to Alzheimer’s.
Former United States President Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office.
“I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who are affected by Alzheimer’s disease,” read the document issued by the former leader who started an awareness campaign that expanded the investigation around the ailment. Reagan passed away in June 2004 at the age of 93 after battling the disease for a decade.
One of the last images of the actor Sean Connery with his wife Micheline Roquebrune.
Just a month after the fateful year 2020 ended, Hollywood was in mourning to fire the actor Sean Connery. The protagonist of the first films in the James Bond saga died at the age of 90 after living with senile dementia during the last months of his life. The diagnosis was reserved until his wife Micheline Roquebrune revealed the illness that had aggravated the actor’s health. “It was no longer life for him. Lately he was unable to express himself,” said the interpreter’s widow
“The cause of death was a complication of the Alzheimer’s disease, which he lived with for the past three years“, explained Jordan Walker nephew of comedian Gene Wilder who died at the age of 86. The interpreter was unaware of the diagnosis and in fact his family decided to keep the ailment suffered by the actor in the strictest privacy.
Actor Gene Wilder.
“We understand all the emotional and physical challenges that this situation presented us and we have been one of the lucky ones, from this pirate disease, because unlike so many other cases, it never robbed him of his ability to recognize those who were closest to him. nor did he take command of his personality”, read the statement. The eternal Willy Wonka died listening to his favorite song ‘Somewhere over the rainbow’.
