Last week, my son told me that Bruce Willis had aphasia.

I have something in common. “Die Hard” was one of my favorite movies, and his action hero, John McLane, played by Bruce Willis, was awesome. No, I’m not John McClane. I have aphasia. 

I listened to the stories on the news. Many people learned about Aphasia for the first time. There are over one million people with aphasia. Some of my friends recognized aphasia, as I had it because of my stroke in June 2020.

The news stories said that Bruce’s aphasia was “impacting his cognitive abilities”. They added that “concerns about Bruce Willis’ declining cognitive state swirled around sets in recent years”.

The Inside Edition, said about Aphasia and Bruce Willis:

– “Did Bruce Willis’ cognitive challenges put others on the movies set at risk…”

– “… disturbing stories of his troubles,”

– “… secretly struggled for years to keep making movies,”

– “Willis… unexpectedly fired a gun loaded with a blank on the wrong cue, terrifying the others…”

I was concerned that many of my friends thought I had the same issues with aphasia as Bruce. The news did not report the entire story.

With aphasia, people have damage to the brain.There is a language impairment. Three things that can occur cause aphasia: a stroke, an injury, or “frontotemporal dementia” (FTD) which has Primary progressive aphasia (PPA).

I have aphasia. It damaged my brain because of the stroke. It’s on my left brain. Sometimes I can’t seem to say the right words. I want to say cow, but I say cars. I know the words, I just can’t come up with it. Also, people who talk fast I have a problem understanding what they were saying. I also can’t remember a long sentence.

Two types of aphasia are Wernick’s and Brocha’s aphasia.

Wernick’s aphasia is a language disorder that makes it hard for you to understand words and communicate. Broca’s aphasia can comprehend what others are saying, but cannot express themselves.

Bruce Willis did not have the similar issues that I have, nor do many of my friends have.

About a year ago, I read the story of Monty Python’s member of Python’s Flying Circus, Terry Jones. They diagnosed him with “frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in 2015. Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a subtype of FTD.”

I thought that the news about Bruce Willis was similar.

Therapy in my language is something I work hard on. Penn, Temple, Penn State and others have Aphasia groups. Most of the people in the groups I work with are victims of strokes or injury. I have not dealt with those with PPA.

I want to thank Bruce for letting people know about Aphasia and pray for him and his family.

Earlier, I loved “Die Hard”. My new logo is:

“Aphasia Rocks. Yippee-ki-yay, motherf****r.”

Resources:

https://scitechdaily.com/learning-about-aphasia-the-neurological-condition-afflicting-bruce-willis/

https://www.aphasia.org/aphasia-definitions/

https://www.aphasia.org/stories/profiles-of-aphasia-terry-jones/