Bruce Willis's daughter: "I miss a different version of who he was"
While the famous actor deals with frontotemporal dementia, his eldest daughter Rumer Willis underwent genetic testing to assess her risks. Regarding her father, she admitted with pain: "There are days that are just so hard."
While her father Bruce Willis (71) struggles with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a diagnosis that has irreversibly changed the person he was, his eldest daughter Rumer Willis (38), who underwent genetic testing (ApoE) against the backdrop of his medical condition, admitted in an interview with PEOPLE magazine: sometimes it is scary to check the results.
Willis collaborated with the health company Function and underwent a test designed to assess genetic risk for developing Alzheimer's and dementia. According to her, the results indicated an average risk level. In a video shared on her Instagram account, she admitted with eyes glistening with pain:
"I miss my dad so much. I miss a different version of who he was. There are days that are just so hard."
In the interview, the eldest daughter of Willis and his ex-wife Demi Moore said: "In our family, there are different genetic factors, not just dementia but also breast cancer. But knowing the information is power. If I know in advance what diseases I might be exposed to, I can start acting actively, like reducing inflammation in the body or maintaining heart health." She added that she finds comfort in the fact that her famous father got to meet her 3-year-old daughter, Louetta.
Last May, Rumer said on the show The Inside Edit: "I am so grateful that I have a child who got to meet him, because I don't know if my sisters will have that opportunity." Regarding the changes she noticed in her father, she added: "There is a sweetness in him. He was always a very tough and masculine man, and now there is a tenderness in him, which perhaps being Bruce Willis did not allow him to express in a certain way."
In the three years since the star received the diagnosis, his family and his wife of the last 17 years, Emma Heming Willis, and their daughters Mabel (14) and Evelyn (12) have shared honestly about the ups and downs of his health struggle. Heming, like Rumer, had already expressed identical feelings:
"It is mourning someone who is alive — and that is what many people who care for a person with dementia experience. Because your person is physically there, but perhaps not mentally or emotionally."
