Robin Williams’ Widow Pens Poignant Essay About His Struggle With Dementia

Several years have passed since Robin Williams’ 2014 suicide, but the comedian’s deeply-felt impact still echoes in our hearts. Now, his widowed wife Susan Schneider Williams reveals her husband’s anxiety-ridden final moments and his battle with Lewy Body Disease leading up to his death.

“This is a personal story, sadly tragic and heartbreaking, but by sharing this information with you I know that you can help make a difference in the lives of others,” Schneider Williams wrote.

“As you may know, my husband Robin Williams had the little-known but deadly Lewy body disease (LBD),” Schneider Williams wrote. “He died from suicide in 2014 at the end of an intense, confusing, and relatively swift persecution at the hand of this disease’s symptoms and pathology. He was not alone in his traumatic experience with this neurologic disease.”

Schneider Williams reveals that while Robin used to have the ability to memorize and recall hundreds of lines of script, he struggled to even remember single lines during the filming of Night at the Museum 3.

“Robin was losing his mind and he was aware of it. Can you imagine the pain he felt as he experienced himself disintegrating? And not from something he would ever know the name of, or understand? Neither he, nor anyone could stop it—no amount of intelligence or love could hold it back,” Schneider Williams wrote.

“Powerless and frozen, I stood in the darkness of not knowing what was happening to my husband,” Schneider Williams wrote “Was it a single source, a single terrorist, or was this a combo pack of disease raining down on him? He kept saying, ‘I just want to reboot my brain.’”

Aside from LBD, Robin also suffered from depression, and it was later learned that he also had the beginning stages of Parkinson’s disease.

“[Robin] had a history of depression that had not been active for 6 years. So when he showed signs of depression just months before he left, it was interpreted as a satellite issue, maybe connected to [Parkinson’s],” Schneider Williams wrote.

“Throughout the course of Robin’s battle, he had experienced nearly all of the 40-plus symptoms of LBD, except for one. He never said he had hallucinations. A year after he left, in speaking with one of the doctors who reviewed his records, it became evident that most likely he did have hallucinations, but was keeping that to himself.”

Schneider Williams goes on to explain the massive damage LBD had wreaked on Robin’s brain, likening it to chemical warfare.

“The massive proliferation of Lewy bodies throughout his brain had done so much damage to neurons and neurotransmitters that in effect, you could say he had chemical warfare in his brain,” Schneider Williams wrote.

“One professional stated, ‘It was as if he had cancer throughout every organ of his body,’” Schneider Williams wrote. “The key problem seemed to be that no one could correctly interpret Robin’s symptoms in time. I was driven to learn everything I could about this disease that I finally had the name of.”

[ H/T Rolling Stone ]