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<\/p>\nBut, in hindsight, that wasn\u2019t the Bruce I knew. Especially when it came to connecting with his daughters. Bruce was a family man at heart. Early on in our relationship and before we had children together, he wanted to spend as much time with his older girls as possible. If we were traveling, he was always dying to get back to them, calling the feeling a \u201cgravitational pull,\u201d which always brought him back to his girls. This was something I loved about him. Today, I understand that him checking out at the table was likely due to cognitive overload\ufeff \u2014\ufeff difficulty processing conversations, which is common in primary progressive aphasia (PPA), the variant of FTD that Bruce has. It was an early symptom of his disease.<\/p>\n
Many families spend years living with a lot of confusion around symptoms prior to a diagnosis. From speaking to other care partners, I have learned how subtle (or not so subtle) symptoms of certain forms of dementia like FTD or Lewy body, for example, can rock a whole family system and destroy it. (This is not always the case with other dementias like Alzheimer\u2019s, where symptoms like memory issues are more obvious. Each form of dementia is different, which is why it\u2019s important that all types of dementia are not lumped together.)<\/p>\n
For FTD in particular, in those early years, no one suspects the diagnosis because most people have no clue what FTD is. So, they assume their person is being rude, apathetic, withdrawn, depressed, irritable, impulsive, reckless or lacking empathy\u2014an array of behaviors that seem like personal choices rather than symptoms of a disease. This major shift in behavior, language, and\/or personality is frustrating, confusing, and can ruin relationships. FTD is not your doctor\u2019s first or second thought either. Often FTD is misdiagnosed as a midlife crisis, depression, or bipolar disorder, to name just a few, because the symptoms can apply to all those conditions.<\/p>\n
Bruce Miller, M.D., the leading expert in FTD, professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, and head of the Global Brain Health Institute\ufeff, explains: \u201cMany of the symptoms are very elusive, and they are different for each neurodegenerative disease. So, while it may be easier to recognize that a memory problem is Alzheimer\u2019s, it\u2019s trickier to understand that a change in language or personality is FTD or another form of dementia. Most of us think about the brain as important for memory and language. But the brain is also responsible for our social interactions\ufeff \u2014\ufeff how we relate to others and how we nurture and empathize with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most of us don\u2019t know this or anything else about FTD, and all you see and experience is that something is incredibly different with your loved one. Also, if you\u2019re like I was, you may feel strange bringing these things to the attention of your partner\u2019s doctor\u2014especially if that doctor is not your doctor, too. Initially, I was uneasy going over Bruce\u2019s head in that way. Something about the morality of it didn\u2019t sit well with me. If you feel that way, too, consider the advice of Yolande Pijnenburg, a professor of young-onset dementia at Alzheimer Center Amsterdam at the Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands: \u201cIf your feeling gets stronger that this change in behavior is something that person can\u2019t help, you have to trust that feeling because you\u2019re actually acting to benefit your partner.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Video: Bruce Willis\u2019 Wife on Life After His Dementia Diagnosis<\/p>\n
Subtle changes due to dementia can go on for years, and all that time your person looks fine on the outside. Even more bewildering is that there might never be a moment when he or she expresses concern that something is wrong to you or to a doctor. There\u2019s actually a medical term for this: anosognosia. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) defines anosognosia as a \u201cneurological condition in which the patient is unaware of their neurological deficit or psychiatric condition.\u201d So, if your person isn\u2019t raising his or her hand for help, it\u2019s easy to think that maybe everything is okay. This makes those early stages confusing, and it\u2019s FTD and other early-onset dementias that doctors can easily overlook again and again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But, in hindsight, that wasn\u2019t the Bruce I knew. Especially when it came to connecting with his daughters.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6428,422,6427,6425,6426,5303,6424,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-5234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-unexpected-journey","tag-book","tag-book-excerpt","tag-bruce-willis","tag-caregiving","tag-dementia","tag-emma-heming-willis","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}