THE BILL OF LIFE … BURNSIDE ACTOR’S WIFE REVEALS THE TRUE LONELINESS OF APHASIA
When Bruce Willis – one of the world’s best-loved actors – decided to reveal he is suffering from aphasia, it was a condition I’d rarely heard of …
It was there of course, a trace somewhere, in the homeopathy of my mind. But I don’t think I’d met anybody who suffered from it.
Aphasia though was just another disease hanging around out there – or in this case, yourself – that you blanked.
If you refuse to recognise it then it doesn’t exist… men like me invariably feel this attitude is our best health-care route.
But aphasia, despite it operating in the shadows of our mental worries, does exist.
And it destroys lives, families, relationships and homes.
So, when Bruce, aged 67, and his family decided to tell the world about his problems and how they will cope with them in the future, it was a brave move.
And it caused another much-loved actor to step up and be counted. Chris Ellison played hard-nosed copper DCI Frank Burnside in The Bill. And, for now at least, he has been ‘silenced’ by aphasia.
Only a few family and friends knew.
Chris’s wife Anita, aged 69, is quoted as saying: “We’ve been so lonely. Chris is trapped in his body. He can understand everything going on around him but can’t speak, read or write. Sometimes I feel as if I have lost my charismatic, very funny and caring husband.
“It’s frustrating for us both but when he looks into my eyes I see he’s still in there. I have cried buckets, it’s a kind of mourning. But he’s still here with us, still very caring and loving.”
Chris was diagnosed with aphasia after a severe stroke in the summer of 2020.
Aphasia is when parts of the brain to do with language are damaged and it can happen after a stroke or head injury.
In Chris’s case he was found him on the bedroom floor at their Brighton home and had to be lifted him through a skylight and airlifted to hospital.
Chris is now relearning the alphabet.
Anita said “When you’ve been a celebrity, people recognise you. He hated it, he couldn’t even say hello. He ended up not going out, he didn’t want to see friends. We have seen a few but it’s frustrating for him. It’s been very lonely for both of us.”
Neuroscientist and author Dr Julia Jones says aphasia affects more than 350,000 people in the UK and there is no definitive cure but therapies can help.
So, if anybody wants to share their thoughts on this awful condition, please drop us a line at The Society – see contact us on the front page – and we will tell our 300,000 readers about aphasia as often as we can.
If you have any positive reports about treatments or you have found ways of dealing with the problem let us know – we’ll let others know too.
One Reply to “THE BILL OF LIFE … BURNSIDE ACTOR’S WIFE REVEALS THE TRUE LONELINESS OF APHASIA”
I used to teach in a large college, and for many years one my department’s groups were suffering from aphasia, following stroke. They were a group of about six to eight adults of different ages. One was seventeen and the majority in their fifties and sixties. This was a few decades ago and at that time after a stroke people were entitled to six months speech therapy and then there was nothing to help them with their speech problems and their loss of ability to read and write in many cases. We taught each of them individually, as their needs differed. One man, who had been in business all his life was having to learn to read at the very beginning stages. He struggled with words like ‘cat’. One day he walked into the classroom and the teacher of a previous English class had left some text on the blackboard. He stood and looked at the cursive script and then he read ‘adjective’. This was a breakthrough that we all celebrated inwardly. Aphasia is a distressing condition. I hope there is still some provision today to help sufferers.