Those who knew Wanda Fowler say she was a great joy to be around. She would always have a smile on her face and had something good to say about every person. Wanda knew everyone, it seemed, and had many friends. She was smart, sharp, and witty, adored by her colleagues at the company where she’d been working for four decades. All in all, she was an eternal optimist who loved life.
But Wanda’s family began to notice a difference in her demeanor–changes that threatened to dim her spark.
“I started to notice odd things about mom. Work was becoming frustrating for her. She spent longer hours in the office. She’d had that job for many years, and it was strange that she was suddenly struggling so much,” said Craig Fowler, Wanda’s son, and CEO of Joygage.
I’ve seen how optimistic and driven people can solve seemingly insurmountable problems through technology. This technology, in turn, can be used to help people ‘forgotten’ people, like those living with dementia.
Craig Fowler, Founder and CEO, Joygage
Only in her early sixties at that time, Wanda decided to retire earlier than planned. In the months that followed, the once lively and witty Wanda also began to engage with others less, became more absent-minded, and would also daydream more often.
The early signs
One day, after Craig came home from his job in Boston to visit his parents in Tennessee, his father, Don, told him that Wanda wasn’t going to drive anymore. “My mother was 60 years old, and she was way too young to stop driving. That’s when I knew that something was terribly wrong,” he shared.
Soon after, Wanda experienced a series of transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), which urged Craig and his father to bring her to the doctor for a brain scan. It was then they confirmed that Wanda was displaying signs of early-onset dementia.
“Thinking back on that time, our experience mirrors the typical scenario for most families where you don’t really want to admit or recognize that Alzheimer’s or dementia is occurring. It’s such a terrible diagnosis, and you’ll find many excuses around the situation,” Craig recalled.
As Wanda’s condition worsened, she found it more difficult to keep up with daily life, and in turn, lost her confidence. “She stopped doing the things she once enjoyed, like going to church or meeting her friends. She couldn’t sit through a movie, or solve a puzzle like she used to. I looked for things she could do at home. However, when it came to dementia-friendly activities, there was little available. Most of them were designed for people with a good short-term memory.”
Craig also noticed that Wanda went out of her way to hide her dementia from others. “She would make an effort to show people that she still remembered things and she was able to be independent. She didn’t want to be a burden.”
Going into the middle stages of dementia, Wanda became more frustrated and anxious. “It was tragic to see her once joyful demeanor transformed into anger and resentment. But even at that time, she would still often revert back to her joyful self.”
The bigger toll of dementia
Craig’s father, on the other hand, became overwhelmed with the demands of dementia care. He struggled to provide her with constant interaction to keep her occupied and happy each day.
One of the few activities that worked was driving her around for hours each day on back roads, which wore him down, but soothed and kept her mind occupied.
Caregiving took over his father’s life and took a toll on his well-being. “He had very little time for himself. It had become his full-time job. He had started identifying himself with his role as a caregiver, and he lost his independent sense of self.”
Being away from his family, Craig also struggled with a lot of guilt. “I spent a lot of time and resources flying back and forth, away from my kids and my job. I never felt like I was doing enough.”
Eventually, Craig’s father began to develop his own health problems, and became too weak to continue with his caregiving duties. Wanda’s move to a memory care facility caused his father’s physical and mental health to deteriorate further.
“Caregiving had become his life, and without my mother to care for, he struggled to find meaning. He suffered from anxiety, and fell ill,” Craig shared. His father died in early 2017, a year and a half after his mother left home. His mother succumbed to the disease on Christmas Eve in 2015.
Finding a better way
Craig thought about how things could have been done differently in the wake of his parents’ passing. “Looking back, I would have provided more support for my father to give him respite. I would have also been more proactive in finding activities for my mother to do that did not require my father to be active every moment,” he shared.
Craig has spent much of his life working with startups and growing tech companies in the past 20 years. In 2002, he joined the eCommerce company Vistaprint in its early stages. He then left in 2017 when the company, by that time known as Cimpress, had grown into a global company with more than 8,000 employees, and $2 billion in annual revenue.
“Having worked in tech startups, I’ve seen how optimistic and driven people can solve seemingly insurmountable problems through technology. This technology, in turn, can be used to help people ‘forgotten’ people, like those living with dementia.”
Putting his experience to use, he sought a solution to address the challenges of dementia care. In 2019, the idea for Joygage was born.
While most dementia care solutions focus on disease management, Craig sought to improve their daily happiness and quality of life.
“The lack of engagement in the life of a person living with dementia is more debilitating than one would think,” he shared. “People like my mother who were once vibrant and active were forced by their condition to become idle and feel unproductive. This, in turn leads them bored and agitated. This tends to push others away, leading them to become isolated, lonely, and over-dependent on their primary caregivers. The caregivers, in turn, become vulnerable to mental, emotional, and physical stress, due to mounting responsibilities.”
He also sought to address the complicated process of finding ways to engage people living with dementia. “Because the mind of a person living with dementia is constantly changing, caregivers often exhaust themselves looking for ad-hoc solutions to hit a continuously moving target.”
Improving quality of life
Through Joygage, Craig seeks to encourage social and mental engagement for persons living with Alzheimer’s and dementia. The app offers a scientifically supported curation of customized entertainment and dementia-friendly activities that work well for people with various levels of cognitive decline. In turn, he aims to provide much-needed but often overlooked respite for carers.
“We want them to feel joy when they watch movies or listen to music from their youth. We also want them to gain a sense of purpose when they participate in stimulating activities that fit their current level of capability, like gardening, or knitting,” he shared. “This allows them to enjoy the highest quality of life post-diagnosis, while also aiding their families in the dementia care process.”
Beyond the benefits of the app, another goal for Joygage is to make an impact on the larger Alzheimer’s and dementia care community. “Within the next few years, we want to reach hundreds of thousands of people, and to develop opportunities for continued research, community-building through creating a compassionate support system.”
While there is currently no cure for dementia or Alzheimer’s, Craig hopes that Joygage’s alternative approach will help allow the millions affected by the disease to continue living with happiness and dignity.
“Even in the late stages of dementia, my mom was still a sweet and wonderful person. We must not forget that those living with dementia are still people, even if they lose their mobility, or their ability to communicate,” said Craig. “My mission is to bring these people more moments of daily joy and contentment into their lives.”