My mother, 87, with Parkinsons and moderate dementia, has been in a NH just over a year and increasingly refuses to eat. She'll go for breakfast as she likes oatmeal, refuses lunch and I suspect is now refusing dinner as well. Yesterday I picked up things she had asked for which included two types of cookies and assorted chocolate bars. I used to take her a little fruit but, in the last couple of months (since having a stroke) she won't eat it and only wants cookies and chocolate. I didn't go to her room but left the shopping at the desk as I have a cold.
I called her just before dinner time (when I knew she'd be awake as the staff try to get her to go eat) and she told me she wasn't going to dinner. She also said the last time she was weighed she was 80lb. As you can imagine, she's skin and bone and due to taking blood thinners (has for many years) is covered in bruises. After her stroke she was returned from hospital to the NH deemed palliative and sleeps most of the time.
Is her body starting to shut down? Are we nearing the end? Deep down I think I know the answer to my question.
Constipation is often caused by narcotic medication - is she on something for pain?
Taste, buds wane as humans age, even more so with dementia. My aunt lost your ability to taste and enjoy food almost overnight when she had three little strokes, which were in no way obvious by the way, and they affected the area of her brain that controlled her taste buds.
Here once you go into a nursing home you don't keep your own doctor - her previous doctor is now 85km away from her in any event. Even if she were able to have a doctor locally I can't lift her into my truck and the nursing home staff are not allowed to do so.
As far as meals are concerned she can feed herself but for those that can't there is a separate dining room where residents are fed by staff one on one. Believe me, if her teeth were giving her trouble she'd be all over me like a dirty shirt.
She's given protein shakes several times a day but mostly refuses to drink them. She likes apple juice drinking boxes and I make sure she always has plenty on hand. She often refuses to go for meals but the staff insist and make her sit at table even if she only has a juice. You can't force her to eat.
What she did on Christmas Day was what she does every day, mostly watch tv and sleep. There are a lot of activities at the nursing home but she's always been something of a hermit and has never joined in. I call her every day, though she has a habit of answering then, confused, putting it down and leaving it off the hook for hours. I haven't visited for over a week as I've a bad cold and, as you may be aware, there's a virulent strain of the N1H1 flu virus sweeping across Canada.
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