Bruce Willis’ Dementia Symptoms Dismissed as Stuttering

• Bruce Willis’ initial problems with language, the first sign of frontotemporal dementia, were overlooked due to his ongoing struggle with stuttering
• The actor’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, shared: Die Hard Yıldız pursued acting as a way to control her stuttering
• She shared that her situation is “much better” these days and that “there are cracks in the light” as she struggles with her husband’s illness.

Bruce Willis‘Early signs of dementia dismissed as return of childhood stuttering, wife Emma Heming Willis in question.

“Bruce always had a stutter, but he was good at covering it up,” said Heming Willis, 46. Town and Country About the first symptoms of the actor frontotemporal dementia.

Dementia symptoms “start with the tongue,” he said.

“For Bruce, this started in his temporal lobes and then spread to the front of his brain. “It attacks and destroys a person’s ability to walk, think and decide,” he said.

Heming Willis told the press: “As his language started to change, (it seemed) it was just part of the stutter, it was just Bruce.” “Never in a million years would I have thought it would be some form of dementia for someone so young.”

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a catch-all term that encompasses a group of diseases that affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain (areas associated with personality, behavior, and language). Mayo Clinic explains.

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Aphasia is a disorder that affects your ability to speak. Willis was initially diagnosed with — may be a symptom of FTD.

As Heming Willis explains, “I say FTD whispers, not shouts. It’s hard for me to say, ‘This is where Bruce ends up and his illness begins to take hold.’ “He was diagnosed two years ago, but a year ago we were diagnosed with aphasia, which is a symptom of a disease but not a disease.”

Die Hard He shared that the actor’s stutter was what initially pushed Willis, now 69, to pursue acting.

“He had a severe stutter in his childhood,” Heming Willis said. “He went to college and had a theater teacher who said, ‘I have something that will help you.’ In that class, Bruce realized he could memorize a script and sing it without stuttering. “That’s what pushed him into acting.”

These days, Heming Willis said he’s “much better than when we first got the FTD diagnosis.”

“We had so many plans, so many cool things we wanted to do with our girls, so many things we wanted to experience together. You completely rip out that page and then how do you rewrite the story? I’m learning how to take back control. It may not be the best story I can think of, but there are cracks in the light.”