Tallulah Willis, 29, revealed to Fox News that she knew something was seriously wrong with her dad long before he was formally diagnosed with aphasia.
Bruce, 69, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
Tallulah wrote a special essay for Vogue Magazine discussing her father’s illness.
She said the symptoms started with a vague unresponsiveness that the family chalked up to a general hearing loss.
Tallulah said that some of his action movies, like Die Hard, impacted his hearing negatively.
The unresponsiveness broadened, and Tallulah said she started to take her father’s lack of response personally.
Tallulah said that since her father had remarried Emma Hemming and had 2 babies with her, she felt her father was no longer interested in her. It hurt her feelings.
Ultimately she realized that he was ill. His illness impacted his ability to express and understand written and verbal language.
The challenge with dementia is that the symptoms may be vague for a while until it becomes very clear that something is wrong.
The entire Bruce Willis extended family is supporting him, but Tallulah confessed to Vogue that she knows hard times are heading the family’s way as her father continues to decline.