Ted Turner, the 86-year-old media mogul and philanthropist who founded CNN, is recovering from pneumonia and “is doing well in rehab,” a spokesperson said Monday.
Turner was hospitalized with a mild case of pneumonia and is now recuperating at a rehabilitation facility, Phillip Evans, the chief communications officer for Turner Enterprises, said in a statement.
“While he was diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia in 2018 and despite the health challenges it presents, Ted continues to remain resilient and engaged in his professional and personal endeavors,” Evans said.
Turner revealed in 2018 he is living with Lewy body dementia — a common but little-known neurodegenerative disease.
Affecting about 1.4 million Americans, Lewy body dementias — which include Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease dementia — are the second-most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Lewy Body Dementia Association.
Turner’s daughter, Laura Turner Seydel, said in 2022 her father was “still in the game.” He remains a chairman of his Turner Foundation as well as the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a non-profit he co-founded to reduce global nuclear and technology threats.
“Ted’s disease is not in vain because he has made it one of his priorities to help so many others that have this disease and may not even know it,” Seydel said in her remarks, made at a “Life Itself” conference.
Turner resides on his ranch property in Montana, where his daughter said he enjoyed fishing and being outdoors.
“Nature, as we know, is so healing, especially when you have chronic stress and anxiety, which he does,” Seydel said.
Though it is unclear how the media titan’s disease has progressed in recent years, Seydel said her father had a milder, more slowly progressing case of Lewy body than comedian Robin Williams, who died by suicide in 2014 and was posthumously diagnosed with the illness.
Lewy body disease, or LBD, is commonly misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. The illness occurs due to abnormal accumulations of a protein called alpha-synuclein in a person’s cells and brain.
These deposits of alpha-synuclein (called Lewy bodies) can cause severe consequences. The most common symptoms of LBD include impaired thinking, fluctuations in attention, problems with movement, visual hallucinations, sleep disorders, behavioral and mood issues and changes in bodily functions such as the ability to control urinating.
Seydel said her father was “very brave” to share his diagnosis with the world.
“Ted is known as ‘Captain Courageous’ and he’s battling through,” she said in 2022.