It’s been ten years since the world lost one of the best actors and comedians, Robin Williams.
This artist, who was larger than life, touched millions of hearts. His smile was contagious and he possessed the ability to make everyone laugh. So, when he ended his life, his fans had a hard time understanding how someone so cheerful and fun could die in such a horrific manner.
But there was more to the story than met the eye.
The autopsy revealed that Williams had Lewy Body Dementia (LBD), a neurological disease in which protein deposits, called Lewy bodies, develop in nerve cells in the brain regions involved in thinking, memory and movement (motor control), and not Prskinson’s disease as doctors claimed during his life.
During the last years of his life, Williams’ health started to fail. The man who could memorize thousands of lines without making a single mistake started having troubles remembering on set. Unfortunately, that frustrated him a great deal and led to anxiety. “It was a period for him of intense searching and frustration,” his son Zak said speaking to Max Lugavere for the podcast The Genius Life, as reported by Fox News. “It’s just devastating.”
William’s wife, Susan Schneider Williams, also opened up about the actor’s misdiagnosis. “All 4 of the doctors I met with afterwards and who had reviewed his records indicated his was one of the worst pathologies they had seen. He had about 40% loss of dopamine neurons and almost no neurons were free of Lewy bodies throughout the entire brain and brainstem,” she wrote for Neurology.
Susan described Williams’ health condition prior to his passing and said it deteriorated and no one knew what to expect next as it all started with the actor experiencing stomach cramps, heartburn, and digestive problems, and later developed a resting tremor in his left hand, which was thought to be brought on by a prior shoulder injury.
According to new reports, the actor’s final days were agonizing and tumultuous, while Susan described it as though her husband was “living a nightmare…”
William’s passing saddened his close friends. One of them, Sir Billy Connolly, spoke of William and his decision to take his own life and said, “You have to give a guy the position that he’s wise enough to make up his own mind.” Asked if he wouldn’t have tried to save his life, Connolly said, “I don’t think so.”
Connolly, who has been suffering from Parkisnon’s disease, the same disease Williams was misdiagnose with, said he and the late actor used to speak on the phone, expressing their close friendship and appreciation for one another.
During the week of his passing, William called Connolly and invited him over to dinner.
“He phoned me and said, ‘Let’s have dinner,’ and during the dinner, he said, ‘I love you.’ I said thanks very much. He said, ‘Do you believe me?’ I said ‘Of course I do.’ He said, ‘Believe me, I love you.’ I said, ‘That’s great.’”
“I thought ‘how weird, how weird for him to say that, it’s not like his usual.’ He was dead on the weekend,” Connolly continued.
Rest in peace, Robin Williams, you are forever missed.