Monday 15 October 2012

A baby bullit might be in order

One of the terrible things about end stage Dementia is that people lose the ability chew and eventually the ability to swallow.  On mom's wing there are a few residents that have feeding tubes.  One lady sits most of the day hooked up to a bag of liquid nourishment (her husband sits with her the entire time).  Then late in the afternoon she is unhooked and her husband will take her around the facility in her wheelchair.  Sometimes a dementia patient will try to pull the tubes out.  This creates complications so when they do that they are restrained for up to 6 hours.  This is what their families want for them. The feeding tubes don't make them gain weight or strength.  They don't put at less of a risk of infection or pneumonia.  They don't prolong life either so why torture someone with a feeding tube.  Mom did a personal directive before she got really sick and she does NOT want a feeding tube.  Because of this I watch her eating and her swallowing like a hawk.
The menu at the facility for the residents like mom is pretty much the same.  Oatmeal and yoghurt for breakfast and mush for lunch and mush for dinner.  I have tasted the mush and the mush all tastes the same.  The only variation is the vegetable mush which could be anything from carrots or peas to squash or beets.  But the mush is mush and the lunch mush looks and tastes just like the dinner mush and if I didn't know better, which I don't, I think they are just reserving the same mush over and over again.  I might have to sneak into the kitchen one day.  If you ask mom what she had for lunch she'll tell you fish.  If you ask mom what she had for dinner, she'll tell you fish.  Hell in mom's mind she's eating fish everyday and twice a day.  The thing is that mom hates fish, so everything tastes like fish to her.
The staff assure me that mom has a good breakfast.  She likes oatmeal (though I know she prefers Cream of Wheat) and she like yoghurt.  I feed her at every lunch and at most of the dinners too.  At lunch she has no problem eating the soup or the pudding for dessert.  However, the mush in between those two courses, oddly enough suddenly mom has problems swallowing and I don't blame her.  I watch her face when the mush is put in front of her and her eyes squint at it and I can just see her absolute dislike for the stuff.  If the potatoes are real (sometimes they are fake mashed potatoes) she'll have a few bites of that and if the vegetable mush is good, she'll have a few bites of that too.  But that meat mush, well it's just gross and I wouldn't feed it to a dog.  There is no salt and pepper on any of the tables, no ketchup, no butter to even slightly enhance or hide the blandness of the mush (I'm going to sneak in some Ketchup).  It makes me wonder if the dieticians really care or do they think, these people have no mind left so what does it matter.  Well it does matter, it matters to me because I don't want my mom to die yet and everyone knows that we get vitamins and energy from our food.
I raised two children and when they were babies it made no sense to me to buy jars of baby food when all I needed to do was cook something up, put it in the blender and then freeze the puree in ice cube trays. Someone figured this out and created the baby bullit and they are now  uber rich because of it.  I am now thinking that I can make a decent tasting stew and get a baby bullit and blend it into cubes and freeze it, just like I did with the kids (minus the baby bullit) but make it for mom.  It would have some taste  and some flavour and nutrition and maybe, just maybe mom would eat it.  Hell, I could do all her food, the vegetable, the potatoes, the meat, you name it.  I'd add some butter and salt and seasoning because in all honesty, at this point do we really need to worry about her cholesterol or blood pressure.  I'm sure Canadian Tire will have a baby bullit.
The sad thing is that my mother struggled with her weight for as long as I can remember.  She was always dieting or trying this new fad or that new fad when really all she had to do was stop eating so much bread and cheese and buttermilk.  Finally she has reached the weight she always wanted to be at, 140 lbs.  Yep, the Dementia diet works, but I wouldn't recommend it.

1 comment:

  1. How about smoothies? fruits, protein powder, water/milk. I have recipes and can share if you like.

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