Primrose

Primrose is a 53 year old who takes care of her 88-year-old father with severe dementia. Last year he still lived at home, but spent 8 months in the hospital, and has now moved into a long-term care home. Primrose also took care of her mother, who has now passed away.

Needs

Current Approaches Used by Primrose Alternate Suggestions  What Could Be Created? 
1. Primrose needs help getting a diagnosis for her father.  After Primrose’s father drove on the wrong side of the road, they were able to get people in to help her father. Primrose is unhappy with this though, because something had to happen before they got any help.

She took him to the center for aging, and they told her it was normal aging.

2. Primrose needs help advocating for her father’s needs at the hospital.  They were understaffed, and lacked training in caring for people with dementia. Primrose would bring her father home to bathe him. She did this every day for 8 months. 
3. Primrose needs help coping with the emotional side of watching her parent’s condition deteriorate.
4. Primrose needs help reminding her father to eat. He didn’t eat because he didn’t know how to make something and even when food is put in front of him, he will not eat it. Verbal cueing to remind him to eat once food is placed in front of him.
5. Primrose needs help teaching her father to use his phone. People would leave messages on the answering machine, but her father would not check them. Primrose got her father an iPad and he used it to make FaceTime calls. He got himself to Apple and took classes on how to use the iPad.