World FTD Awareness Week ended on October 1, and to mark the occasion, Emma Heming Willis saluted two women who helped her come to grips with her husband Bruce Willis‘ Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) diagnosis.
On her Make Time to Connect podcast, Emma’s final cast of FTD Awareness Week welcomed Maria Kent Beers and Rachael Martinez, who started the Remember Me podcast Heming Willis found while desperate for more information on her Die Hard star husband’s condition.
Rachel lost her father to the disease; Beers, her mother.
“I didn’t know where to go, what to look up, I’m looking things up and it’s freaking me out,” Heming Willis said. “There wasn’t a lot [of information about FTD] but you guys popped up. I started listening and I felt like, ‘Oh my gosh I’m so grateful to hear other people’s stories.'”
Later, she expressed, “There’s nothing that levels the playing field like FTD. And I have made some of the greatest connections with other care partners, people like you who just get it. There doesn’t have to be so much explanation.”
She added, “You guys have been so helpful to me. I want to say thank you. I’m surprised I’m not crying because that’s where I go to when I think of people who have been that lifeline for me.”
Heming Willis and her family revealed in March 2022 that Willis was retiring from acting because he was diagnosed with aphasia, a brain condition that affects memory and speech.
In February of this year, they updated fans that Bruce’s condition worsened to Frontotemporal dementia, a “cruel disease” for which there is no cure.
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