Eating

AddyJ89

I am beginning to suspect that my mom is not getting enough food. She will often put the majority of her food either in the fridge or back in the pan it was cooked in. She refuses food sometimes as well, claiming that she's not hungry, but not having any food all day. We don't have a kitchen table that we can sit down at so I can't ensure that she's eating her food. And she gets mad at me when I try to sit with her while she's eating.

My mom is very strong-willed and refuses to believe/is unable to understand that she is sick. I thought I had gotten through to her once a few weeks ago but she has long since forgotten that conversation. I am worried that she isn't getting what she needs from me and I am barely able to provide it for myself. We are currently waiting on a hearing date for me to get guardianship so that we can place her with a facility that can meet all of her needs because I very much cannot. I don't want to send her away but even this is showing me that placing her is better than keeping her home with me, where I continue to fail at taking care of her.

Any advice on how to make sure your LO is eating even when they do not want you around when they do so would be greatly appreciated.

M1

Hi Addy. There was a similar discussion from hooch yesterday on this same topic. I'll say the same here as there- you can't really be the food police. Controlling what someone else eats is very difficult, be it that there's too much or too little. I frankly wouldn't worry too much about it, you've got plenty of other battles to fight. Perhaps you can leave some snacks or finger foods out where she can get them if she's hungry? Another thought- is she on any meds that could suppress her appetite? Aricept(donepezil) and Namenda (memantine) are notorious for doing this and are many times stopped because they adversely affect appetite.

AddyJ89

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/218790#Comment_218790

That's a good point. I just remember that my grandma ended up malnurished before she passed away and I don't want that to happen to my mom, at least not because of something that I am doing.
I don't believe she's taking any medicine that suppresses appetite. I think she just forgets that she's eating and then when she sees it again, she doesn't want it anymore so she puts it away.

mrsabaldwin

So weight loss and food aversion were some of the concerns I had when I took my mom to her PCM last April and she was diagnosed with dementia. Digging deeper on my own, I discovered that as the brain atrophies with dementia the ability to feel hunger is affected as well. Foods that my mom loved, she hates now. She will imagine that lettuce is pickles or that peanut butter is tuna. And she refuses to eat based on these imaginations. She will also flat out refuse food. Sometimes because she feels full despite not eating at all that day and other times she has delusions of get-togethers with family and cooking a bunch of food and claims she’s eaten a lot and is full. I’ve tried everything I can think of from milkshakes to sneaking protein into foods she will eat to nutritional shakes and adding as much fats to food and it is no use. She will love a food for a while and then refuses it at a later point. Her imagination is something else. One day she said she had soup for lunch and it was bitter and that means someone tried to poison her! In reality she had toast, eggs, and a protein shake for breakfast. She hadn’t had lunch yet….that was I was trying to do, feed her lunch. And it was not soup!

I have just come to the conclusion that I cannot purchase anything in bulk as it will be a waste of money when she decides she no longer likes it. And I have to “trick” her a lot. Things like telling her someone dropped of a treat for her etc.

mabelgirl

my moms pcp in geriatrics advised me to just let her eat whatever she wants when she wants. What I do is get snack like food that I know she has liked or eaten before. I make a tray of selections along with a high protein meal shake and let her eat at her pace. For meals I’ll just leave a plate and let her decide. I think her PCP is basically saying the same as M1 , make her days comfortable instead of making her accountable to our desires. Prayers for acceptance.