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My MIL 89 with advanced vascular dementia, shovels food into her mouth at an alarming rate. Today she ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in about six minutes flat. I cut her food up and mash it have given smaller portions have given a smaller fork, but it’s like she’s in a race to get her food down to the point where she chokes . She will not/can not comprehend or listen when we ask her to slow down. We encourage her to take a drink to wash the food down, have taken her fork away until she’s chews and swallows but then she gets defiant and flatly refuses. Is anyone else having these issues and can give me any advice? Thank you.

Sounds like you might have to start, feeding her just one bite at a time, or give Mom more things like yoghurt, and mashed potatoes. Which also just gave me an idea, use spoons or even those fast food sporks, it might be harder for her to pick up her food, so she may eat slower.

I was taking care of this lady once, she was amazing at taking her meds. Your give her a hand full of meds and water, she would throw them all back, with water and they were gone. Well one day I gave her meds to her, turned around, looked back , the poor thing, forgot to swallow and started to chew, I felt so bad for her.

Not what your going through, but shows you you never know what is going to be forgotten next.
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Thank you for the ideas!
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We use ‘sporks’ all the time, DH finds them easier with his long term false teeth. I don’t think they would make it “harder for her to pick up her food”, probably easier. We call them ‘splades’, but Google says that’s the same thing.

If MIL is “89 with advanced vascular dementia”, and that’s the way she wants to eat, is it really a problem if she chokes? Perhaps this is just one more thing that’s not worth a battle about.
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