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Case Stories - Individuals & Families

Hazel - girl w horse

Case Study: Hazel Young

The Challenge:
Hazel Young was in her tenth decade when she moved into the ALF to join 41 new neighbors. She had been sight impaired since birth, legally blind since childhood riding her family horse to school in rural Nebraska because, as Hazel put it, ‘that horse knew the way.”  He last rode a horse in her early 20s (about the age of the young lady in this black & white photo). Hazel later recalled extraordinary details of that horseride near Pendleton in eastern Oregon.  Now blind with very few visitors from outside her new home, this intelligent woman who never had children was at risk of withdrawing into her room, into her sightless world.

mindRAMP Jump Start:
Hazel was invited to listen to the cognitive MemAerobics courses and participate in the various mental exercises. Hazel’s isolation was eased when Roger, in his role as the community’s Activity Director, matched her with a new volunteer, Steve Hunt, a 50-something businessman whose mother had recently passed away and who wanted to spend time with someone “like my mother.” Roger recalls that during one of the TouchAerobics sessions involving recollections of touch sensations, Hazel had said to the group that there is no touch sensation that can match “The power of a horse between you and the earth.”  Quietly she added, “I’ll never forget that feeling.” With her 92nd birthday approaching, Steve and Roger, arranged to “jump start” Hazel’s brain (and her spirits) by surprising with the opportunity to experience the power she spoke of one more time.

Results:
Hazel boarded the bus with 14 other unsuspecting neighbors for a scheduled Mystery Trip. The destination was a private horse arena outside of Salem where Steve (right in smaller photo below) waited with a pair of riding boots and cowgirl hat for his new friend, Hazel. Well before the bus arrived at the end of a long driveway, Hazel’s super-sense of smell caught odorants and Roger heard her mutter: “I smell horses.” The rest of that emotionally uplifting day was captured by a local reporter and photographer. 

                                Hazel & Steve
The power of that horse between Hazel and the earth proved to be a cognitive and an emotional "jump start" that continued throughout the final years of Hazel's life.  


As happens with so many mindRAMP jump start interventions and events, the benefits extend far beyond one person, energizing all who participate and often from those to others with whom they share their feelings or show the newspaper story that was prominently posted for months.

Case Study: Hiram Broiles

The Challenge:
When Hiram arrived at his new assisted living facility (ALF) at age 93. He had hearing problems and was withdrawn, seeming to have lost his life's purpose. The objective was to connect Hiram with his new life at the ALF by establishing social and cognitive bridges with his community peer group.

mindRAMP Services:
Hiram was invited to listen from the "Peanut Gallery" during a mindRAMP MemAerobics class. Through a "Most Famous Person" exercise, we were able to get Hiram to talk about events from his personal past. Leveraging the historical nature of his cascading recollections we created of an educational event at which Hiram share details about his experiences as a young pilot flying for China Airline during the 1930s.

Results:
That day, Hiram was the center of attention, and, with granddaughter at his side, he provided his eye-witness accounts to history as well as his insight and forecasts for the future of the emerging China of today. Hiram's image in the minds of his new neighbors was changed and likely his image of himself had changed as well. The event for ALF residents and their guests ignited Hiram who enthusiastically integrated into his new community.

The theoretical basis for this intervention:

The core concept is to design a tailored "jump start" for brains that, for whatever reason, have stalled and become disengaged. The key is to carefully identify emotionally charged memories that can trigger positive autobiographical reminiscences thus providing a powerful, cost-effective and creative mechanism for sharing these personal stories with a community peer group. This approach helped Hiram reconnect with an emotionally significant time of his life and to use that rekindled passion to forge meaningful connections in the present.
 Viiola's hand
            
                         

Case Study: Viola Smith

The Challenge:
Viola arrived at Southern Hills Assisted Living Community at the controls of her scooter and always with a smile. Engaging in activities was a spectator sport for her with Friday mornings her weekly highlight. Viola’s lifelong passion was quilting. She was transported across town each week to a community hall where her quilting friends met promptly at 10 a.m. to set up for the four-hours together. Roger drove her as scheduled and when dropping her off that first time, he escorted Viola and her scooter into the hall where he was exposed for the first time to the world of traditional quilting. He stayed through the half-hour it took the group to set up the current quilting project that was stored through the week in a closet. This was a “Friendship Quilt” that Viola designed and started 17 years earlier. She began by sending blocks to her closest quilting friends asking them to quilt their names, birth places and return them to her. She received them but her life changing physical condition forced her to put them all in a box for the next 16 years. Now they were being assembled by this group.

mindRAMP Jump Start Method:
Roger arranged a “Jump Start” for Viola by turning an unused portion of his Activity Room into a full-time quilting club named the “Sew What Quilters.” While providing an activity space for other quilters as well as attract resident onlookers, a primary goal was to enable Viola to be able to rekindle her passion and allow her to re-engage that feeling whenever the mood struck her which was often several times each day.

Results:
With every morning a potential Friday Quilting morning, Viola now had seven reasons each week to get up in the morning.  Enjoying countless hours with her needle and thread, she quickly recaptured much of her handwork skills as well as reconnecting with the socially magnetic magic of a quilt under construction.  Viola thrived in the continuous engagement with her neighbors as they watched and chatting about quilting or whatever.  Visitors to the relocated Friday qulting sessions included novice quilters wanting to learn from Viola and her friends.  Two young men on a Mormon mission stopped for a minute and stayed for hours learning how to quilt fromm a master.

Viola’s "Friendship Quilt" was not only finished but resulted in her "victory lap". Her later life quilting was the focus of newspaper articles and three quilting retrospectives of her life’s work that Roger entitled: “A Lifetime of Stitches.”		 viola lifetime

viola dining room
Art & Vivian

Case Study: Art Kempf 

The Challenge:
Art Kempf was a tall distinguished gentleman who was challenged by cognitive decline. With the increasing assistance of his wife, Vivian, he attended activities but stayed on the periphery and rarely participated. The right emotional “Jump Start” could get him further engaged with others.

mindRAMP "Jump Start" Solution:
Roger noticed during EarAreobics cognitive exercises that Art loved to sing and that he was especially energized when singing along with or listening to Big Band music. Roger also learned from Vivian that Art could still get into his WWII Navy uniform and was quite proud of his fitness and of his service to the navy. These insights about Art’s passions led to the development of a customized “Jump Start” intervention for Art. An outdoor concert featuring the original Glenn Miller Orchestra was scheduled at the nearby Oregon Gardens and Roger arranged for an outing. Vivian agreed to store Art’s uniform on the community’s bus, the “Clipper,” and she and Roger walked with Art to the bus during the intermission. Aboard the Clipper, Vivian showed Art his uniform Roger asked Art if he would like to wear hit back to the concert for the band’s traditional “Salute to the Armed Forces” that always kicks off the second half of their second concerts.

Results:
Art, proudly decked out in his Navy blues, rose and stood and saluted at perfect attention as the band started their medley of Armed Forces songs. As the audience between our group and the stage became aware of the saluting sailor standing at attention, they gradually rose and applauded him. When the orchestra began the “Anchors Away” portion, cheers joined the applause. Those moments moved many in the crowd to tears. The rest of that evening was an emotional skyrocket for Art. Art’s emotional energy, his vigor for life was recharged for months. He joined more than one singing group and attended several other events in his uniform.

A “Booster Jump Start” occurred later that same fall at the Oregon Veteran’s Day Parade in Albany Oregon, the largest west of the Mississippi. Art proudly stood on the wheelchair ramp in a pouring rain and saluted every flag. The Grand Marshal, a decorated Navy Officer, stopped the parade to meet and talk with the sailor in uniform and a Eugene TV station taped an emotional interview that aired that night and throughout the next day. Art’s vitality following that “Jump Start” never subsided.
              Art interviewed for TV		 Art concert view

Art Salutes







          



       

Art waves











wv sunset

Case Study: As Simple as a Sunset 

The Challenge:
How to create a novel, engaging and memorable experience for a group of assisted living / retirement community residents but do so at a minimum cost.

mindRAMP Jump Start Solution:
During one of the mindRAMP MemAerobics sessions involving EyeAerobics, Roger asked about memories of seeing a sunset.  After several romantic tropical island, mountain top and coastline recollections, he asked the group to each recall when they last watched a sunset.  The answers were "a few days ago", "last week", etc.  But when he challenged them to think of when the REALLY stopped everything and paid full attention to a sunset, most agreed it had been years or even decades.  Roger then scouted the area for a location that faced west, out of town but less than 30 mintues from Salem, with a flat area for walkers, etc. and the all important indoor restroom.  He found the spot at the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge and the event was placed on the calendar to leave one hour before sunset.  But not just any sunset.  To insure that it would be memorable, he scheduled it for the longest day of the year, June 21st.          

Results:
The sign-up sheet filled quickly.  The bus left at 8:20 p.m. with the sunset due at 9:23 p.m.  The magic of the sunset with its moment-by-moment changes in color was captured by a newpaper photographer and reporter.  The photo below was featured in the June 24th Salem Statesman-Journal with a story about the group "basking in the summer solstice."  Riding a wave of enthusiasm with the sounds, smells and sights of the long evening with each other, the group did not want to leave.  The only way to end this event was, of course, a stop at Baskin-Robbins. 

moon risesunset 4
  
















Mascot

Case Study: Mystery Trips 

The Challenge:
Create a memorable series of moments and then sustain those memories by stimulating social engagement following an outing on the community's bus. 


mindRAMP Solution:
Mystery Trips.  These are sometimes carefully choreographed with the cooperation of others including loved ones and family. Other times they are trips that are actually "aimless" but determiend to discover someplace to stop when we see it without a pre-determined destination.  One key element of the design of the mindRAMP Mystery Trip is that only a minimum number of people actually know where the group is going and that includes staff.  Often only Roger and the Executive Director of the community knew where he was going and when launching one of his "aimless" Mystery Trips it was important to act exactly the same as if he knew where he was going.

Results:
Every time a Mystery Trip showing up on the activity calendar sign-up sheets, it was the FIRST to fill up with a waiting list that was also full.  Stops ranged from Hazel Young's horse ride to minor league baseball games to a pumpkin-head scarecrow alongside the road . . . that led to the owners inviting the group into their backyard for homemade lemonade, cookies and a tour of their private collection of miniature horses, mini-pigs, and rare South American chickens that laid green eggs. 
Upon arriving home and through the next several days, the riders were willing storytellers to friends, family and staff who just had to know, first hand, what adventures occured on that latest Mystery Trip.		  scarecorw

ball game food
straw

Case Study: Strawberry Fields Forever 

The Challenge:
Reconnect as many residents as possible to the sensory stimulating bounty of fresh local farm produce available at harvest time.

mindRAMP Solution:
Local Oregon-grown strawberries have for many of our residents become a taste memory, replaced by beautiful looking but too often tasteless "store-bought" berries.  Roger reached back to his summers on berry picking "platoons" when school children were bused to the local fields to earn money picking strawberries, raspberries, pole beans, etc.  The planning included early spring contact with some local strawberry field owners to explain the plan to arrive around 8 a.m. with a "platoon" of supervisors who would sit in and outside of the bus to supervise while Roger picked about eight pounds of early season strawberries.  The owners of the berry farm was all smiles and very much on board and arranged to have the group arrive the day before anyone else had picked the first berry of the season.  Scheduling with a few days of flexibility the date was set on the calendar and the sign-up sheet was quickly full.  The "home team" was also working all morning in the activity kitchen area with a volunteer family member organizing (1) the baking of enough Bisquick shortcake bisquits to be covered by the eight pounds of fresh picked berries and (2) the whipping of REAL whipped cream.  These two groups would then be a part of the all-communty event after lunch when the fresh strawberry shortcake would be served to residents, families and staff.

Results:
A glorious sunrise greeted the group as they left Southern Hills.  They were the only ones in the field with only the sound of birds and distant tractors.  Roger had barely begin picking when his supervisors left the chairs he set up to migrate into the fields.  Thirty-six pound of berries later, they left for home where they were greeted with applause and cheers from the kitchen crew and later from the residents.  Strawberry shrotcake topped with old-fashioned whipped cream never tasted so sweet.		 straw 1













straw 3
grandma posters

Case Study: Grandmas visit THE Grandma

The Challenge:
One of the residents in the communtiy, Martha Kepthorne, was ready for an emotional "jump start."  Roger was aware of the challenges Martha was facing with loss of her husband and an increasingly debilitating chronic pain.  As she withdrew further within her apartment, Roger looked for an exit strategy from her slide into isolation.

mindRAMP Solution:
Observing and noting that Martha's room contained several framed Grandma Moses prints pictures, suspected that there could be an emotional jump start down that path.  Asking a few questions about the pictures on her wall brought out a gush of facts, details about the famous painter.  Martha was a serious fan.

During his planning for future engaging activities, he routinely scoured the local art museums and galleries for ideas.  In a flash, he connected the the coming "Grandma Moses" exhibit with Martha's need for a brain stimulation, an emotional tonic.  With details in hand, he met with Martha explaining to her that he needed her help.  She knew more about Grandma Moses than anyone he had ever known and he wanted her to help him recruit a bus full of her neighbors to the exhibit in Portland, about an hour away.  They had several months to plan and market this trip. 

Results:
Martha dove brain first into the planning by reading several additional books about her favorite artist and leading discussion groups through coffee table books containing prints of the same paintings that they would be seeing in person.  Martha and Roger combed through the lunch menus of the Portland restaurants near the art museum and selected the one where our grandmas would gather before heading to the museum.  Martha (on the right in the pink sweater) was energized by the whole process of being involved in the months of planning, the event itself and for months afterward basked in the praise from others for the wonderful experience she had helped create.  She had a purpose each day during that process.  She experienced much less time focusing on pain, was no longer isolating within her apartment and was able to channel her time toward a purpose: A visit with her all-time favorite Grandma.

 grandma luncheon
grandmas kicking