Eat up

My grandfather has always had a healthy appetite.  He used to be the dumping grounds for others' unwanted leftovers at the dinner table.  He would eat a handful of grandma's homemade cookies before dinner and still have seconds.  One of granddad's lifelong quirks is that he puts salt and pepper on everything (unless it's sweet, and then he'll put more sugar on it).  If you served him a salt and pepper sandwich, he would put more salt and pepper on it.  He wasn't overweight - ever - he just had a fast metabolism and a taste for everything (except mushrooms, mayo, and anything green).

For the first few days in the rehab, granddad would sleep through meals.  We could maybe rouse him for a few minutes - enough to get a bite or two down - but then he would fall right back to sleep.  I still felt accomplished when I would get him to chomp down on some chicken or scrambled eggs, firmly believing that if he could just keep his appetite and get some nourishment that he'll continue to heal.  But now he's awake, alert, and pretty disinterested in food.

It's lunchtime now.  Today they brought in some baked chicken, stuffing, potatoes, and lemon meringue pie - a tailor made meal for my grandfather.  But instead of eating it, he stared at it for a while, dozed off, woke up, tried to dump the plate on the floor, tore up his napkin, and played with the sugar packet for a few minutes.  The nurses want to know if we should put him on a soft-foods diet.  But the problem isn't that he can't chew and swallow the food.  It's that he's too confused to put it in his mouth in the first place.

Yesterday he took his bottom dentures out and used them to push food around on his plate.  The other day I tried to give him unshelled pistachios (his favorite), but he would spit them out after rolling them around in his mouth for a few minutes. He also took a cup full of water and threw it across the room.  Not aggressively, just like someone who might be trying to toss a crumpled up piece of paper in a garbage can.  The water spilled ALL over the floor, and granddad's response was "I almost made it."

(On a completely selfish note, I haven't eaten a real meal in over a week.  Between an hour roundtrip travel to and from the rehab each day (sometimes more than once a day), my sometimes 12 hours shifts on granddad-duty, sleep, and occasionally work, I haven't had any time to shop or cook.  Today for breakfast I grabbed a breakfast sandwich from Wawa.  For lunch I had a packet of cheese and crackers I (also) bought at Wawa.  I've eaten at least a dozen Cliff Bars in the last week, and last night we had Chinese delivery.  There isn't any refrigeration at the rehab, or microwave to heat anything, so until I have a chance to go buy and prepare healthy food that I can keep at room temperature, I'm going to keep eating like a landfill for a few more days.)

How do you feed a person who won't eat?  It's not that they CAN'T eat, they just lack the neurological impulse to put food in their mouth and chew it as a means to stay alive.  The nurse said she'd have someone come in and help him with his dinner, but I just don't see that going well either.