3. TIL that Robin Williams had Diffuse Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson's which [hi...

TIL that Robin Williams had Diffuse Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson's which [his wife believes] led him to kill himself. His wife says depression had very little to do with it.

Joining the chorus of stories of family members who suffered this. My aunt had it and I can attest, like many others in this thread, that it is a horrible, completely devastating, hopeless disease. At first we thought it might be the beginning of alzheimer's, she would randomly mix up dates or talk about our little cousins being in stories from the 70s. That was it. But it escalated so quickly.

She called me on my birthday (Halloween) like she does every year and sang me her own version of the birthday song. By Christmas she could not talk, she could not walk herself, she could not feed herself, she could not function as a human being. She was a complete shell of herself. She was the bubbliest, happiest, person I ever met, and all she could do was sit on a bed and mumble incomprehensible gibberish.

This went on for two years. She died in February.

My dad, her brother, is so worried about it happening to him since issues like this run in his side of the family. He says if he gets diagnosed, he'll kill himself, and I support that. If I take after him, and I get diagnosed, I'll kill myself too.

Robin Williams, as horrible as it is, opted out of endless suffering and a nonstop decline into ... nothing. Into no longer being a person. I will never blame him for that.

/r/todayilearned Thread Parent Link - theguardian.com
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