Persona Scenarios
Patients
Paulina is a 72 year old woman who was born in Oestgeest where she has lived until she was twenty. She then moved to Amsterdam to work as a clerk at a medical shop in the Kalverstraat until she retired. Her husband meanwhile worked in construction until he died in an building accident when he was 52. She has three children of which one has passed away three years ago of breast cancer: Joyter, Wojtek and Ina. She was diagnosed with alzheimers six years ago and has been in a care home for the last two years since she could no longer take care of herself at home. When she was younger she would always go to the local jazz club to dance and she occasionally still likes to do so. She has a tendency to forget that her child and husband are dead, so she always asks for them. Since she has been in the care home she has been enjoying playing bridge and eating sweets. She always has a stash of Winegums hidden in her purse at all times. Due to a recent fall, she has been walking a bit crooked but the doctor said she will recover soon.
Madde is a 63 year old woman born in Bloemendaal and who lived in the nearby Haarlem her entire adult life. She was born during the war and suffered from many nightmares as a kid. Madde was a strong proponent and activist for women's rights during the second wave of feminism starting from the middle sixties. She was an active activist for the Labour Party and was an important member of their women's network. In 1975 she made headlines after being part of a group that occuped an abortion clinic that one of the ministers wanted to close. The 90s she was a member of parliament and she spend the 2000s in varying posts going from mayor of a small town to being active part of the water board. She does not have any children, but has been happily married since the seventies. An aggressive form of Parkisons was diagnosed two years ago, but her memory has been relatively solid. However she has the habit of becoming paranoid and forgetting her medication.
Alex is a 51 year old male from Breda who suffers from early on-set dementia. When he was appointed as the CEO of an international trading company he noticed that the kept forgetting about various deals that he had made. Sometimes it was even hard for him to remember who exactly worked for him. The breaking point came when he walked into his old work asking for an intern who has stopped working there ten years ago. He is married to a loving husband and they have three children together who are all in the later stages of high school. He does not accept his illness and can often become moody or aggressive towards staff and/or relatives when they remind him of something. At night nurses hear him crying in his bed and his notebooks are filled with ominous/gloomy text.
José (90) was born in Barcelona during the dictatorship of Franco, when he was a teenager he was an active protestor for liberalism and democracy. During a protest he was arrested, tortured and thrown into prison for a decade. After being let go, he fled to the Netherlands where he worked at various cafés and restaurants. After the overthrowing of the fascist government in 1975, he tried to go back to his home country but his trauma was too strong. After returning he fell in love with a Dutch nurse and married her. They had one child together who is now a professor of Geography at the University of Amsterdam. José's dementia has made him resentful, angry and conservative. He has stopped accepting the homosexuality of his son since he now believes that it is a sin in front of the eyes of God. He suspects his wife of fourty years to be cheating on him with his doctor and being in league with the bank to steal his money. Two months ago he was diagnosed with terminal blatter cancer and his doctors stopped treating him.