How The Hollywood Actor’s Recent Dementia Diagnosis Helps All of Us
Now we may not like talking about it, but for great many others it’s the elephant in the room. But just recently, Hollywood actor Bruce Willis’s actor recent diagnosis has once again helped get the conversation in going.
Yes, I am talking about dementia. The cruel disease which affects the brain and to which there is no cure. A cognitive illness which, unlike Alzheimers which only affects the memory, Dementia affects a great deal more. Aspects that of brain functions that can be affected range from a variety of things such as eating and drinking to speech and understanding to behavior and memory loss.
Bruce’s diagnosis is Frontotemporal Dementia which in his case affects both his ability to understand verbal communication and to actually communicate as well.
Sadly, and for those who have studied the illness and/or supported those who live with it, will know that unfortunately there is just no happy ending. Once the disease begins affecting the brain and visually manifesting itself it only gets worse. How long this takes to happen can never be predicted as not all cases are the same.
Basically, it’s like many other lives affecting illnesses that sooner or later lead to horrific outcomes. You know you have a sickness that you will never beat and that it’s only going to get worse as time goes on but you just don’t know how long it’ll take or how much of a grip it’ll take when it actually does
But first and foremost, what is it? What does it mean to have this illness? And how does it affect the sufferer?
Well, it’s when the nerve endings on the brain die off and because it’s one of the areas of the body that cannot self-repair the damage is irreversible. The illness affects neurological abilities, and in this case, communication and the ability to understand it.
Now as I have already mentioned in previous columns I have done when speaking about this issue I have never shied away from speaking about how devastating it can be. But it’s something that we’re all going to have to talk about more often.
Since the start of 2018 I have worked as a Support Worker helping support vulnerable adults with various disabilities, mental health issues and complex needs. Here’s a little crash in what I know though; for the first year and a half I was based in a supported living house and one of the individuals I helped had a form of Dementia. In their case it was Vascular Dementia, and this type can be brought on by previous illnesses like a Stroke.
Now when I first started supporting this individual, I was taken aback by the way they behaved. They were in their mid-70’s yet their behavior was as though they were at Pre-School. As days passed and I got to know more about this individual I learnt about how they used to be before the illness took grip. Apparently, you could converse with them and was able to tell you about their past. For me, because I had only known them when they were in the full throw of Dementia, I found it somewhat difficult to imagine this individual as they were before.
After a couple of years, I found myself back at the place helping out for a few hours, I’d been at another location for a few months. When I was there, I quickly noticed that their Dementia had gotten much worse and it was absolutely clear that they needed more help than they would’ve done over a year ago previously.
Overall, it was a very cruel disease that has zero concept of pain, misery or loss that it inflicts upon people, from those who suffer it to those who know people suffering from it.
Even a late relative of mine had a form of it in their final months, I never saw much of them in that period of time. In some ways I would view it as a form of relief as this was someone who’d been a constant regular in my life and had many memories of. And sooner or later we’d reach that stage where they’d struggle to remember who I was or how I was.
According to a report people who are diagnosed with Frontotemporal Dementia can live for around 8 – 10 years, and there are some who actually live much longer. What we should do well to remember is that it’s not actually a death sentence either, even though the final outcome isn’t going to be a nice one.
But what I will say is that more support will always be required as it gets worse
