Bruce Willis‘ wife gave an update on the actor’s health two years after he was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, saying he is in “really great health overall.”
Emma Heming Willis sat down to speak with Diane Sawyer about Willis’ condition as part of a new special, Emma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey, which airs tonight on ABC at 8 p.m. ET and streams tomorrow on Hulu and Disney+. In a preview for the special, Heming Willis said she and the rest of their family have had to learn new ways to communicate with the Willis “It’s just his brain that is failing him.”
“Bruce is still very mobile. Bruce is in really great health overall, you know,” Heming Willis said. “It’s just his brain that is failing him … The language is going, and you know, we’ve learned to adapt. And we have a way of communicating with him, which is just a different, a different way.”
In 2022, Willis’ family revealed he was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease aphasia, a language disorder that affects a person’s ability to communicate. Heming Willis told Sawyer that before his diagnosis, she noticed “he was just a little more quiet” in social situations, when typically he was “talkative and very engaged.”
“When the family would get together, he would kind of just melt a little bit,” she said. “He felt a little removed, very cold. Not like Bruce, who is very warm and affectionate. To go in the complete opposite of that was alarming and scary.”
Nearly a year after his aphasia diagnosis, he received a second diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia. According to the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD) organization, “The progression of symptoms — in behavior, language, and/or movement — varies by individual, but FTD brings an inevitable decline in functioning.”
Now, two years after his diagnosis, Heming Willis said that they experience “moments” of Willis’ bubblier side of his personality coming through. “I mean, we still get those days. Not days but moments,” she said. “It’s his laugh, right? He has such a hearty laugh. And, you know, sometimes you’ll see that twinkle in his eye or that spark, and, you know, I just get, like, transported. And it’s just hard because, as quickly as those moments appear, then it goes.”
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Heming Willis’ book about caregiving for Bruce, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path, arrives on Sept. 9.
From Rolling Stone US
