This is a serious, genuine inquiry. I'm not just sniping at my MIL. She is 81. She's a handful. Lives in her home, with a full-time caregiver/companion whose main duty is to make a fuss of MIL and pay constant attention to her. It's more personality issues than dementia.
However, MIL has never had a sweet tooth that I remember and I've known her for 34 years. She takes tea and coffee black, without sugar. Not big on desserts or cakes, never noticed her tucking into petits fours after dinner. The most I've ever seen her enjoying is plain, boring shortbread and for a reasonable cook, she's never had any interest in baking or in serving proper puddings at family meals (humph!).
All of a sudden she's almost literally taking candy from babies in her craving for chocolate and it emerges that she flips out if she goes to a house where there isn't Diet Coke and ice cream available. As told to me separately, by my BIL and my son, rolling their eyes.
It isn't that I don't see why a woman of 81 shouldn't have as much ice cream as she likes. It's the radical change in palate, and the somewhat extreme appetite for sweet things that's troubling me. Shouldn't it be reported to her primary?
Life is weird, and I think we all know that.
My friend's mother, in her final year of life, went crazy for Lindt chocolate (which I understand, those truffles are amazing). This lady would give money to the kids she KNEW would buy her a couple bags of them. (She had grown up as a farm wife and they never had sugary things.) After she passed, my friend went to retrieve her personal belongings from the NH, and found...hundreds of Lindt chocolates in her bedside table. She also discovered that her mother had been eating these to the exclusion of almost everything else. What did it matter, in the end? She went out with chocolate on her face and a smile.
I asked daughter if she knew if anyone has attempted to get a brain scan done. *Everybody* has attempted it, apparently, including Golden Child. More than once, over about the last five years. MIL won't have it.
I bet they are thinking tenderly that she is afraid that they might find something.
I don't believe it. I think she is more likely afraid they'll find nothing, and she will be caught bang to rights as a BIG FAT FAKE.
Mom barely touched her dinner at Easter but then erupted into a chant of I want cake - I want cake - I want cake when dessert was mentioned
Of course she has had a sweet tooth all her life too
I know this is nothing new to you, of all people; but it's the... ohhhh, even writing it down seems futile. It's the frustration of this inability to make her understand that it is not only her needs that have to be considered and it isn't only for her sake that the family needs to have some idea of her true state of health.
I could start sending her cakes and chocolates. But that would be a bit evil of me...🐒
P.S. You could start sending cake and chocolate, as a sort of reverse psychology. It might promote useful conversation with sil. ;-D
Although admittedly I didn't find being shunned for four or five years terribly painful, exactly! But then she's not my mother and I don't love her - or not any more than you do love your children's grandmother + auld lang syne and all that.
I feel a bit defeated; I certainly don't feel hopeful about changing anything; and I'm not even confident that it's my place, if you see what I mean? I'll do watchful waiting, see what develops.
Yes, I do see that, ideally, it is not your place. I think watchful waiting is a good thing, and developing as healthy and honest a relationship with sil as possible, so that if the moment opens up you will be heard. I do think mil needs a thorough neuro psych assessment. I never thought that mother would get one, but eventually she did. Prayer helps too.
My friend had this similar sudden craving - almost insatiable - --- it turned out she had cancer, and her body was craving the sugar for energy because the cancer was 'eating' all her body energy.
It was ovarian cancer, stage 4. Doctor said to let her have all the sugar she wanted. It's not healthy, but there was no viable treatment for her cancer after surgery and a round of chemo, so he said while feeding her sugar, was also feeding the cancer - there was no reason she shouldn't be comfortable and have what ever she was craving or needing.
It could be many different things causing this change in behavior and in cravings. But do let her primary care doctor know.
Good to get her Dr. to do a good blood check up, and do a medication/medication interaction check as well, as something that had no side effects for years, could now be changing for her.
Other than that, if what she wants isn't seriously hurting her health, let her have it. If she needs a diet coke and ice cream where ever she goes, buy ice cream cups and cans or bottles of diet coke (many diet drinks can cause cravings for sweets and/or carbs) and pack it in a lunch cooler with an ice pack and take her where ever she wants to go.
Though we learn more and more every year with improved MRI's and PET scans, the brain is still a very mysterious thing.