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<\/p>\nBruce Willis’ cognitive abilities are deteriorating more than three years after the legendary actor’s diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia,\u00a0his wife Emma Heming Willis has revealed.<\/p>\n
The 49-year-old wife of the Die Hard star spoke candidly during an interview with Diana Sawyer for a TV special titled Emma and Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey, which aired on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
She said that while the 70-year-old remains “really great health overall” and is “still very mobile”, his brain disorder has begun to take hold of his daily life.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“It’s just his brain that is failing him. The language is going,” Heming Willis said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve learned to adapt and we have a way of communicating with him, which is just a different way.”<\/p>\n
Willis was first diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a language impairment, in March 2022.<\/p>\n
By 2023, the diagnosis progressed to frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which forced him to step away from his successful Hollywood career.<\/p>\n
Heming Willis recalled that she first noticed something was wrong when her normally charismatic husband started to withdraw from social life.<\/p>\n
“For someone who was very talkative and very engaged, he was just a little more quiet, and when the family would get together he would kind of just melt,” she said.<\/p>\n
His childhood stutter resurfaced, words slipped away, and he appeared less engaged with those around him.<\/p>\n
“He felt very cold, not like Bruce, who was very warm and affectionate, to the complete opposite of that was alarming and scary,” she said.<\/p>\n
Eventually, a brain scan confirmed the FTD diagnosis, sometimes referred to as the “black belt of dementias”, which attacks the front and sides of the brain, slowly stripping a person of language and their connection to others.<\/p>\n
There is currently no cure.<\/p>\n
“To leave there (the hospital) with nothing, just nothing, with a diagnosis I couldn’t pronounce, I didn’t know what it was\u2026 I was so panicked,” Heming Willis recalled.<\/p>\n
The mother-of-two, who is also the actor’s primary caregiver, has since written a book titled The Unexpected Journey to help others facing similar challenges and to raise awareness about the disease.<\/p>\n
On social media, she explained that her mission is to “shine a light on the 63 million caregivers in the US, 11 million of whom are caring for someone with dementia”.<\/p>\n
“So this moment isn’t just about myself or Bruce, it is much bigger than that,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s about raising the voices of caregivers, breaking the stigma around dementia, and shining a light on what millions of families face every day, often with little to no support.”<\/p>\n
In Australia, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates one in 10 people are informal carers, with 1.6 million caring for someone with dementia- most without government support.<\/p>\n
During the ABC interview, Diana Sawyer asked Heming Willis if there was one thing she wished she could ask her husband of 12 years.<\/p>\n
Emma paused as tears started to well in her eyes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Just how he’s doing, if he’s okay, if he feels okay, if there’s anything that we can do to support him better, I would really love to know that. If he’s scared, or if he’s ever worried, I just\u2026 I would love to be able to have a conversation with him,” she said.<\/p>\n
When asked to finish the sentence, “Love is\u2026”, Heming Willis wiped her eyes and replied: “Love is grabbing a tissue.<\/p>\n
“Love is beautiful, it’s grand, it’s unconditional.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruce Willis’ cognitive abilities are deteriorating more than three years after the legendary actor’s diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia,\u00a0his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,16326,447,73765,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-101594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bruce-willis","11":"tag-celebrities","12":"tag-emma-heming-willis","13":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}