Tallulah Willis gave insight into how her father, Bruce Willis, is holding up following his “really aggressive” dementia diagnosis.
“He is the same, which I think in this regard I’ve learned is the best thing you can ask for,” she said on “The Drew Barrymore Show” Wednesday.
“I see love when I’m with him, and it’s my dad and he loves me, which is really special.”
As previously reported, the “Die Hard” star was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in February.
“While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis,” the family wrote in a statement on the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration website.
“FTD is a cruel disease that many of us have never heard of and can strike anyone. For people under 60, FTD is the most common form of dementia, and because getting the diagnosis can take years, FTD is likely much more prevalent than we know.”
That diagnosis came nearly a year after Bruce’s family revealed he was stepping away from acting due to aphasia, a condition that impacts a person’s language processing and communication abilities.
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Since the diagnosis, the Willis family — including Bruce’s five daughters, his wife, Emma Heming, and his ex-wife, Demi Moore — has been open about the actor’s health struggles.
Tallulah, 29, told Barrymore that can be attributed to two reasons, saying, “On one hand, it’s who we are as a family, but also, it’s really important for us to spread awareness about FTD.”
“If we can take something that we’re struggling with as a family — and individually — to help other people, to turn it around to make something beautiful about it, that’s really special for us,” she continued.
Back in September, Heming said on the “Today” show that it is “hard to know” whether her husband is aware of his dementia diagnosis.
“Dementia is hard,” she told Hoda Kotb, adding, “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.”
In addition to promoting awareness of the rare type of dementia, Heming, 45, has provided raw and honest social media updates about her husband and their blended family.
“I know it looks like I’m out living my best life, [but] I have to make a conscious effort every single day to live the best life that I can. I do that for myself, I do that for our two children and [I do that for] Bruce, who would not want me to live any other way,” she said in an Instagram video in August.
“So I don’t want it to be misconstrued that I’m good, ’cause I’m not. I’m not good,” she clarified, adding that she tries to put her “best foot forward” every day despite it not coming “easily” to her.
“When we are not looking after ourselves, we cannot look after anyone that we love.”
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