by Hannelore Sudermann
For a Parkinson’s patient, every day is different. One day the
symptoms could include tremors and muscle stiffness. Another might
bring difficulty eating and swallowing. But every day, Parkinson’s
is a progressive, chronic, debilitating disease that can require
special and specific accommodations.
Over 10 years, Wendy Holman’s mother lived in 10 different
facilities. Each time her needs changed, she had to find a new home
to accommodate her new condition. Dick Almy’s father has a very
different story. He lost some cognitive abilities and ended up in a
locked ward with Alzheimer’s patients. But his dementia was very
different from theirs, said Almy. And because of his
Parkinson’s-related physical impairments, the ward was a difficult
and sometimes dangerous place to be.
Holman, president of Puget Sound Housing for Parkinson’s Disease
(PuSH for PD),
traveled to Spokane this winter with Almy, the vice president, to
look in on a large-scale project with Washington State University
nursing and design students. The interdisciplinary project led by
landscape architecture professor Bob Scarfo stems from an interest
in the interaction between health and the built environment. To
better understand the disease and the needs of their clients,
Scarfo urged his students to visit Parkinson’s patients to see
firsthand the challenges they face.
“When I went into people’s homes they said, ‘We need this, we
need that,’” said graduate student Amber Joplin in her
presentation. “Each one presented me with totally different
symptoms, relationships, and needs.”
Often Parkinson’s patients end up in nursing homes too early.
The institutional character of many of the residences can
affect the mental well-being of the patients and perhaps cause them
to deteriorate faster, noted design students Ali Ilhan and Isel
Oygur, who are working on their doctoral degrees in design.
While considering the changing needs of patients and valuing the
feeling of home over institution, Scarfo’s design students
presented a variety of plans that included space for families, wide
pathways and raised gardens for outdoor recreation, and a strong
feeling of home.
The efforts of the WSU nursing and design students, as well as
financial research from Eastern Washington University business
students, have been invaluable for PuSH for PD, which is now
working on a residential care project to be built north of Seattle,
says Holman. “To our knowledge there never has been a facility
built ground-up with a focus on people with Parkinson’s disease,”
says Holman. PuSH for PD is hoping to see the Seattle-area project
completed in two to three years. It will house 24 patients and
serve as a national model for other Parkinson’s residence
projects.
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