Having felt lousy, I kind of let the duties of trying to oversee my Dad fall pretty much on my wonderful husband. This morning he told me that Dad did not eat his supper last night so he fed him some peanut butter and crackers before bed. Food has to be put under his Gleevic so he will not get sick to his stomach and throw up in the night. I am not really sure what happened but what I pieced together between Mom, Dad and Hubby….
Mom made Dad supper…but Dad was back in the bedroom where he often likes to goes to sit, it is quiet and private in that space…for one reason or another that area is his default space. He will go in there and go to sleep in his wheelchair. So I think that is what happened he was asleep and Mom either told him supper was ready or she nagged at him about supper being ready. Either way, he did not come out and eat.
Instead of calling and letting me know that she needed help getting him to eat she left things as they were so he went without a much needed meal and much needed fluid. This is so very difficult for me, because it puts a strain between Mom and I …a strain that I do not feel needs to be there.
I know that part of her grump is that I sit and feed him. She thinks if he is too lazy to eat then it is fine for him to do without. And I would agree too, except that he is not lazy, he simply eats so very slow, and now he is missing most of his teeth, so that by the time he gets done eating it is almost meal time again, so he is not hungry….but if I can keep him on a schedule and say we are done at this point whether he is or not…then he will be ready to eat again at the next meal. The concept being smaller nutrient dense portions more frequently so that he does not have to eat so much at one time.
We are still dealing with the hallucinations, although they are much better. The worst of them seem to either be late at night or during the night…which can result in early morning hallucinations. They are worse when he does not get enough fluid…and I suspect that was part of the problem last evening about supper…
We are still working on the bowels. This has taken some time but we think that he has improved. We are hearing less and less about his gut pains.
So overall, I do think that Dad has improved. He has gotten strong enough to get himself out of bed several times. If we can just keep him eating, we will be able keep working on the strength issues. He is much stronger than he was this time last month.
By the way, it is my birthday today, which means that since I last posted Hubby and I had our 33rd anniversary.