One of the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease is when the victim refuses to eat. My mother was always a fussy eater. She’s French. If the food didn’t taste great, she just wouldn’t eat anything at all. Now she’s losing a few pounds every month. The nursing home is doing everything they can but obviously this can’t go on forever.
My Mom the Fussy French Eater (It’s Killing Her)
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
3 Comments. Leave new
My deepest sympathies, and many thanks for doing this series.
Jesus, Ted. For what it’s worth, all my best thoughts. A lot of us who know you through your work are thinking of you. There’s no good outcome for this, so we don’t know what else to say. But if there’s something that could be said, a lot of us are trying to.
Hi Ted,
My mother refused to eat and we discussed with her doctor having a tube inserted through her skin over her stomach into her stomach.
The success rate wasn’t very good because it would involve a lot of self care or self awareness, the lack of which is the reason she was in the home in the first place.
There was the possibility that she may forget why that thing was laying on her body and may try to pull it out. Plus infections.
Amazingly to me, some people will starve instead of eating something they don’t like. I would eat bugs if that’s what it took to stay alive.
Another woman in my life refused to eat, but she would take her medicine, so I suggested that we could load up some gelatin capsules with food that she could swallow by pretending they were medicine.
Her answer was a definite NO.
It’s hard to reason with an unreasonable person.