This is a story about the cruelest disease you have never heard of. It’s called frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. And given the devastating toll it takes on its victims and their families, it ought to be much better known than it is.
FTD is the number one form of dementia in Americans under the age of 60. What causes it is unclear, but it attacks the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, which control personality and speech, and it’s always fatal. It is not Alzheimer’s disease, which degrades the part of the brain responsible for memory.
With FTD, people either display such bizarre behavior that their loved ones can hardly recognize them, or they lose the ability to recognize themselves. As we first reported in May, that’s what happened to Tracey Lind one day a few years ago as she was standing in a public restroom.
Frontotemporal dementia: Devastating, prevalent and little understood https://t.co/FSS7YndwyB pic.twitter.com/oHXxCcxJz5
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 6, 2019