by
Sajehar » Tue Feb 02, 2016 3:32 pm
Hi Seoc
I'm with Jenny Lucas regarding skimmed milk... vile stuff!
We tried to get mum to drink full fat milk, but after decades of drinking semi-skimmed she found the full fat too heavy. We stuck to the semi.
About 2 years ago CUK asked me to write about my efforts getting mum to eat. I've located it and copy/pasted it below for you. I hope it's of some use to you.
I’ve been asked by Carers UK to write about my experiences regarding getting mum to eat when she left hospital earlier this year. She’d had a mini-stroke and was in hospital for two weeks. In that time she lost her appetite completely and lost a lot of weight she could ill afford to lose, as she’s always been slim.
I left my job at Tesco’s to become mum’s full time carer; I’d previously been her part-time carer since Jan 11when my father was diagnosed with cancer. He needed someone to mumsit mum as he’d noticed that she was losing her memory, repeating herself, leaving the gas on, etc. I’d do so whilst he was attending his various out-patient clinics, and I got a job working in the evenings so that I could be free during the day for my mumsit duties.
These duties increased as mum’s dementia (I hate that word; I’m going to invent another one) as mum’s spirit wanderings increased, plus her arthritis also increased.
I was plunged right in the deep end regarding mum’s nutrition when she came out of hospital. Plus, I knew next to nothing about nutrition. My idea of a goumet meal was a Chicken & Mushroom Pot Noodle washed down with a can of fizzy Orangina, or tinned spaghetti hoops on toast (white bread of course) followed by a Tesco’s Value Crème caramel or four!
To make matters worse, she hated those Nutrisip/Ensure drinks, describing them as too heavy and slimy.
So I diluted them with semi-skimmed milk and added a few drops of vanilla essence. I’d give my milk/nutrisip/Ensure mix a quick blast in the liquidiser and pretend it was a home-made milkshake. She’d now drink them.
The strawberry and banana Nutrisip/Ensures tasted vile, according to mum. So I only ever used the vanilla ones, and would occasionally add strawberries or a banana to my ‘milkshake’ to ring the changes.
She never managed to drink 3 a day, but at least I was getting some nutrition into her. That was a start.
I learnt via trial and error. I didn’t join the Carers UK forum until mid-september, so really was on my own.
Here are my top six tips for dealing with someone who has a poor, or no, appetite.
Everybody’s different, so they might not apply to everyone.
1) It is only human to present a pile of food to someone who needs to put on weight but, counter intuitively, this was the first mistake I made. Mum would look in horror at the massive plate of piled high food I’d slaved over. Large portions are intimidating to someone with a low appetite.
Now I present all meals, even a Sunday roast, on side plates.
I think it’s important that mum doesn’t feel left out, or feels she’s being treated differently, so I serve everyone with the same meal as her on the same sized plate. If anyone wants more they can always have seconds.
Plus, because I have to chop mum’s meat up into bite-sized pieces, everyone’s meat is chopped up too. I’m big on food equality as I don’t want her to feel she’s being treated like a baby.
2) Mum’s always loved fruit, and I noticed that she’d eat a lot more of it when I’d forgotten to put her fruit in the fridge after a shopping trip.
Food, especially fruit and salad, tastes much better at room temperature than when chilled. If you don’t believe me, try this simple experiment.
Take a punnet of soft fruit, place half in the fridge, and the other half outside fridge. After a couple of hours or so eat one from the fridge, then eat one of the room temperature ones. The difference will astound you; it did me.
Such a simple thing, but mum’s consumption of fruit nearly doubled overnight when I served it up to her de-fridged.
The same with salads. I’d always make these a good couple of hours before we would eat them, and leave them on the kitchen worktop covered with glass lids.
3) I resorted to tricks to get her to eat. Whenever I asked if she wanted something to eat, she’d always say no, maybe later. Later, I’d ask the same question. It was ALWAYS later. I gave up asking her in the end.
Instead, I’d fry an onion, and leave the doors open so the smell of frying onions would waft through to the living room.
I’d then walk in with a plate of cheese toasties/whatever. I’d casually start munching away, without offering her any.
This would either annoy her, and she’d demand some of ‘my’ food. Or, if she didn’t ask for any, I’d pretend I was full, and ask her if she wanted the rest.
About 70% of the time my stratagem worked.
I also ended up piling on the pounds too, in my efforts to trick her into eating.
4) Although she was very frail and weak when she left the hospital, she wasn’t bed ridden. But she was chair bound though.
After about a month, when some of her strength began to return, I insisted that she joined dad and me at the kitchen table for meals.
This made a tremendous difference. Listening to dad and me squabbling/nattering away meant she picked away more at her food than previously. When she joined in, she’d still pick away, and would often finish nearly a whole meal.
With hindsight I wish dad and me had eaten our meals with mum in the living room, instead of leaving her alone until she could join us. Perhaps feeling abandoned at meal times made her appetite worse than it actually was?
5) Mum now eats much more slowly than before. So I found it important to serve up hot foods that taste just as nice when they’ve gone cold. Chips and roasties aren’t very nice when they’re stone cold, and taste even worse when they’ve been re-heated. But boiled and mashed potatoes taste just as good cold as when hot. Fried eggs taste, and look, awful when cold, so they’re out. But scrambled eggs and omelettes taste fine cold, which is just as well as mum can take up to half an hour to eat her morning eggs.
6) I’ve trained dad and me to eat at mum’s pace; again so she doesn’t feel ‘different’ or abandoned, as we all finish eating and leave the table at the same time. I’m sure the stimulation of our meal talk times is helping her in other ways too, and not just with her appetite.
Not everyone will have the time to spend an hour eating super, but if you can manage it, give it a whirl if you too have a slow eating caree.
Naively, I thought once mum got her appetite back, that would be that. It isn’t. She can go days eating quite well, then she’ll lose her appetite again, and the whole rigmarole of tricks etc will have to start up again.
I know as people get older they need less food, but mum’s lack of interest in food, unless actively encouraged, puzzles me.
Is it a symptom of dementia? I don’t know. It has occurred to me that if her brain is changing, then why would her appetite be unaffected? Perhaps some eat too much for the same reason?
Regardless, I’m convinced that if she were living alone she’d have starved herself to death by now.
Which is why all those stories I keep reading about 15 minute care visits disturbs me so much. How can a paid carer possibly prepare food, and encourage their caree to eat it in 15 minutes, or even half an hour; plus all the other stuff they do? It’s an impossible task UNLESS hours are spent on it; not minutes.
Mum’s lucky. She has a very loving, concerned, caring family to look out for her. Many elderly people don’t.
I want to protect them all, but I can’t. Society as a whole can. So, let’s be selfish and demand better care for the elderly. Let’s kick these private care companies in to touch who pay rubbish wages to carers but demand all sorts from them. After all, if you’re not struck by lightning or a bus or something, you too will live to be a ripe old age.
Do you REALLY want a rushed 15 minute visit, conducted by a harried carer? Do you want your needs exploited, without actually having them met? If you don’t, then neither does anyone else.
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