Why Bruce Willis’ Wife Seeks ‘Cure’ for Frontotemporal Dementia
By Movieguide® Contributor
To raise awareness about frontotemporal dementia (FTD), Bruce Willis’s wife, Emma Heming, conducted a series of interviews with medical professionals and others who care for those with the disease.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Bruce Willis’ family updated his fans on his health, sharing that his condition “has progressed” from aphasia, and the actor has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.
Since his diagnosis, Heming has committed herself to raising awareness about the disease.
“I have so many whys, as to why I raise awareness,” Heming said, “but really, at the end of the day, what I would love to see is a cure, a treatment for this disease. And if we don’t raise our voices, they’re going to run right pasts us.”
Heming feels this invisibility because her husband does not suffer from the most common dementia—Alzheimer’s—but from a disease labeled as an “other.”
“When doctors or media talk about dementia, they’ll say ‘Alzheimer’s and other dementias.’ So FTD is the other dementia, and let me tell you something about that disease: it is real, it is out there, and it will bring you to your knees,” she said.
“I think that is an absolute disservice and absolutely disrespectful for these ‘other dementias’ just to be put in that category, I think it’s really important for us to know what these diseases are,” she continued. “I do not want to see this disease and out ‘other dementias’ swept under the rug anymore.”
Heming felt the difficulty of caring for someone with FTD almost immediately after Willis was diagnosed in February because there were limited resources.
“Dementia is hard,” she told the TODAY show. “It’s hard on the person diagnosed, it’s also hard on the family. And that is no different for Bruce, or myself, or our girls. When they say this is a family disease, it really is.”
Not knowing where to turn for help, Heming eventually found the “Remember Me” podcast, where two women shared their experience of caring for loved ones with FTD.
“I am so grateful to be able to hear other people’s stories,” Heming told the podcast co-hosts Maria Kent Beers and Rachael Martinez. “You know, there are some that maybe I don’t connect to, but you have the sort of shared story, so you guys have been so helpful to me.”
Movieguide® previously reported:
Emma Hemming Willis recently shared her struggles caring for her husband, Bruce Willis, amid his fight with dementia and addressed recent criticism over her role as caregiver.
“I just wanted to come on and acknowledge the incredible amount of messages I have received in the past couple of days,” she said, noting that most of the messages were helpful and supportive. A few, however, had some “snarkiness embedded.”
“Those are people with an opinion versus the experience, and those two things are very different,” Willis added.
“I hope, I pray, that the people who have this opinion never understand what this experience looks like or feels like,” she continued.
After addressing her critics, Willis explained how she wishes to use her platform to raise awareness about dementia.
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