"You lost yourself? Yeah. Where did you go? I don't know. I don't have a sense of who I am. Marc Pierrat's mind once ran as smoothly as the gears on his endurance bike. He was a mechanical engineer by training and a marathoner for fun, a guy who maintained complicated systems at work and a meticulously organized garage at his Westlake Village home."
"It is often impossible for a person to talk about the internal experience of living with FTD, either because they can't accurately assess their internal state or don't have the language to describe it. In many cases the disease attacks the brain's language centers directly. In others, a common symptom is loss of insight, meaning the ability to recognize that anything is wrong."
Marc Pierrat once had a precise, mechanically minded life but now struggles after a frontotemporal dementia diagnosis three years earlier. His thoughts are jumbled, routine tasks are incomprehensible, and memories slip away. His wife, Julia, provides hands-on care—managing meals, hygiene, comfort, naps, and supplying names and words he cannot find. The disease often prevents people from describing their internal experience because language centers can be damaged or insight can be lost. Presentation varies widely; in Marc's case some expressive language remains, allowing moments of clarity that are emotionally painful for his family.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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