fightphoe93 posted:YATittle posted:Currently reading the long Robin Williams biography, "Robin," and there's a guy who got into the self-checkout line but had dealt with pain and depression his whole life. Turns out his diagnosis of Parkinson's was incorrect and they discovered after his death he had Lewy Body dementia which had no treatment or cure and he was headed for a really dark place. Yes, his family missed him and was incredibly sad but that particular affliction would've been a long, lonely road of hell.
I remembered reading an article about Robin Williams shortly after he had taken his life and that Lewy Body dementia sounded like a particularly awful disease to live with. Apparently there were times where he knew how bad he was getting and felt like a burden on his family and that may have contributed to him deciding to end it all.
Yes in the book he'd already gone through periods for, say, an hour where he was physically there but mentally gone and silent, and then he'd snap out of it. Scary to his loved ones. Middle of the night paranoia, too, one night he woke up convinced his good friend Mort Sahl who lived nearby was in great danger and it took his wife till 3:30 a.m. to talk him down. That and the thrashing in the middle of the night is why they were sleeping in separate beds.