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Preserving Dignity

After over a decade of watching her mom sink into the depths of Alzheimer’s Disease and slide through the health care system, Gini Ballou said she was angry. She knew both the disease and its effects were beyond her control, but she was frustrated that her mother, who had lived a dignified and respectable life, was playing with the toys her young children were now too old for.

“I just got so angry watching her play with My Little Ponies,” Ballou said. “I had nothing against the product, but my mother was 78 years old. I mean she started [Hailey’s annual arts and crafts fair] Springfest when she moved out here. She was a dynamic, intelligent business woman and here she is happily playing with Baby Mickey…I was asking, ‘Isn’t there anything that is made for her?’”

To Ballou’s dismay, there was not. Most care center give patients with dementia infant toys to keep them entertained. The toys are the appropriate skill level for those with a regressing mental state and often make the patients happy, but Ballou said she felt a product should exist that respected the life the patients once had, even if they no longer remembered it.

After Ballou’s mother passed away in May 2008, she began building DignifieDesigns with the help of her two sisters, Shelley Bahrenfuss and Jude Carlin. The company designs, manufactures and sells puzzles with decade-themed graphics for elderly patients with dementia.

“I wanted our puzzles to be something that remembered who they were even when they didn’t,” Ballou said. “To be something that was appropriate for where their disease had brought them, but had graphics that were respectful of the life they had lived prior to their illness.”

The 15 puzzle sets’ graphics range from late ‘20s art deco to early ‘60s fashion and beauty shop images with the option to send in personal photos for a customized set. Each $20 set comes with four four-piece puzzles made from recycled grocery bags, which adds the benefit of making them dishwasher safe.

“Our goal is that not only will the puzzles stimulate conversation, but that they will do all the things that jigsaw puzzles do,” Ballou said. “UCLA did a study that found every time you successfully place a jigsaw puzzle piece, you release Dopamine in the brain, you stimulate right and left lateral brain connections and it makes you feel good.”

Ballou said the images, whether of classic cars or kitchen appliances, are meant to be something recognizable for the patients. She hopes the pictures can act as conversation starters between a grandchild and grandparent who do not quite know where to begin, and can stimulate memory retrieval.

Ballou said she hopes to expand the puzzle design themes over time and pursue adjusting other products, including clothing and accessories for dementia patients, to be more respectful to a disappearing identity.

“I think [my products] will make caregivers have to recognize them as people again,” Ballou said. “They’re not a potted plant we should water, bring into the sunshine and then wheel away. They’re still people, and I think my puzzles have the ability, in a small but significant way, to really instigate a shift in how we view the dementia sufferer.”

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