'I WANT THE MOST OUT OF EVERYDAY'

DESPITE A DEVASTATING DIAGNOSIS AND AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE, THE 'HAPPY TOGETHER' SINGER STILL FINDS REASONS TO SMILE

- EILEEN FINAN

THE TURTLES' MARK VOLMAN: LIVING WITH LEWY BODY DEMENTIA

At his home outside Nashville, Mark Volman pauses for a moment to examine a red floral sofa. "Do you see a woman with her head bleeding?" he asks. No, he's told, it's just a couch. "Okay," he says, and, reassured, he returns to posing for a People photo shoot.

Volman, a founding member of the '60s rock band the Turtles, has a history with this particular piece of furniture: His brain regularly distorts the crimson floral pattern into the alarming vision he has just seen. To obscure the design that triggers the illusion, the sofa is usually hidden under a plain duvet cover. But on this day the duvet cover has been removed, and the "woman" has reappeared.

Volman's hallucination is a hallmark symptom of a form of Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) a progressive brain disorder that affects thinking, memory and movement. (See box.) Since his diagnosis in 2020, he has been learning to live with the challenges of the disease—moments of confusion, an inability to drive, shaky hands and a shuffling gait. He also knows that what’s ahead will be even more difficult: a “progressive, slow decline that will eventually interfere with his ability to function,” says Kristen Pilote, Volman’s nurse practitioner at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who specializes in cognitive neurology. But Volman, 76, who is revealing his illness publicly for the first time, says he’s choosing to accept it as an unexpected next chapter. “I got hit by the knowledge that this was going to create a whole new part of my life. And I said, ‘Okay, whatever’s going to happen will happen, but I’ll go as far as I can.’”