Emma Heming Willis Opens Up About Navigating Husband Bruce Willis’ Dementia Diagnosis

Emma Heming Willis gets candid about Bruce Willis’ FTD diagnosis.

Transcript

00:00FTD doesn't scream at whispers and you know I didn't really know anything about young onset

00:09dementia prior to Bruce getting his diagnosis. It's very gray to know like where did Bruce stop

00:15and where did his disease kick in. It's hard to know you know and I hear that from a lot of

00:20caregivers as well. It's just very hard to sort of pinpoint and especially for the diagnosis that

00:24Bruce has which is primary progressive aphasia which is a subtype of FTD. FTD can affect people

00:31in different ways. There's three different subtypes. There's one that affects behavior,

00:35there's one that affects speech, and then there's another one that can affect movement. So for Bruce

00:40it was speech and you know what I started noticing was that his stutter started to come back. I would

00:45say that was kind of the start of that and not really understanding why and just kind of being

00:54like okay well I guess that is that is what what it is. Things that he was saying or the conversations

01:01that we were having that weren't really aligning anymore and you know things just got very cloudy

01:09in our relationship which just so wasn't like our relationship. You know things just started to shift

01:15gradually over time and it was just hard for me to put my finger on what and why and what was happening

01:22and I never in a million years thought that was a symptom of FTD or young onset dementia.