HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Wendy Rosenthal was 51 years old when she lost the ability to order her world.

Salt. Chair. Pen. Basic items and words that she could no longer recognize.

"I remember sitting down at dinner one night and I said, 'Will you please pass me the salt?' And she looked at me and said, 'I don't know what you're talking about,' says her husband, Lowell.

Lowell says those were the first signs of what would later be diagnosed in Wendy as frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a rare form of dementia that destroys cells in the frontal lobes of the brain, and with them, critical functions ranging from language recognition to feeling and behavior control.

Unlike more common forms of dementia like Alzheimers, FTD typically strikes a younger population, crippling victims in the prime

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