Back in February, the news that Bruce Willis had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) hit me hard. Not because I’m a huge Die Hard fan, but because I know far too much about FTD, and my heart breaks for the 68-year-old Hollywood actor and his family. Last April, my sister Constance lost her eight-year battle with one of the FTD diseases. She was 58 years old.
Six years ago Constance was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia (PPA), a form of FTD. It’s a rare neurodegenerative disease that begins as a subtle language disorder and progresses to a near-total inability to speak, read, write or understand what is heard. What causes PPA is unclear, but it attacks
