more caring and the culinary arts

This abnormally Multiple Sclerosis unfriendly hot summer has kept ‘outings’ from Patti’s care facility indoors and while trying to make the best of the situation has in part driven my recent experiments with caring and the culinary arts.

In turn I have been reinvigorated to rejoin the teamwork involved in feeding Patti at her care facility, increasing my visits during dinner and help with feeding. Which by the way are never boring. Just last night Patti practically jumped out of her chair when startled by a spoonful of jiggling jello. "That (blankety-blank) was wobbling right in front of my face. It startled me!"  Now laughing and trying to feed her, believe me that jello was doing a whole lot more jiggling.

Bottom line it’s been a refresher course in Patti’s abilities or lack thereof. Which raised the question – was finger food as a function of adaptive self-feeding really ever given much consideration in developing Patti’s care plan?

Anyway I was thrilled to learn that both occupational therapy and speech therapy staff have decided to reevaluate Patti and depending, possibly start to work with Patti again on adaptive self-feeding, in particular finger-food.  

Chatting with the therapists was a treat and sharing my experiments on visits at home on caring and the culinary arts and my conclusions is what the teamwork of the care facility is all about.

Eating must be first and foremost safe with Patti's level of MS progression regardless of who is preparing her meal and feeding her. Evaluating and testing an ability and an idea is critical. As any long term caregiver knows there are endless ‘tricks of the trade’ that work just fine one-on-one for you but often do not translate. 

related entries:

caring and the culinary arts III  July 28, 2012

caring and culinary arts II July 24, 2012

caring and the culinary arts July 08, 2012 

-- 
Patrick Leer

BLOGS:

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

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