I bathe my mom the night before she has to go out the next day. I also try
to have a quick bite to eat before we have to leave in the AM. Sometimes my mom will hold the food in her mouth and gradually spit it out. Other times she will eat the food very quickly. I am so confused as I don't know what to do. I try to take care of her on my own, but it is really getting hard because I do work full-time and my job is very stressful. I don't want to put my mom away, she has 5 sisters but no one will step-in the way I need them to. They only are available on the weekends and only hours at a time!
I am at a complete loss as to what to do. She will swallow if her companion is here. and feeds her.
Some times she won't even feed herself. She tried to use a spoon for a straw to drink her cherries last night.
Usually I try to get her to spit it out land let her go without.
Oh yeah, If I don't catch it she will spit it in any direction she is facing. That includes my face.
Keep trying and good luck.
How long has your mother had dementia? I'd do a lot of reading about its progression and how working a full time job and caring for a dementia patient seems unfeasible. I'd consider that caring for a person with advanced dementia is a job that requires teams of people and that your sisters may not see that as something they can do. I'd read about what options there are for her, such as getting outside help to come into the home and how feasible that will be, since, she'll need 24/7 care. And, if there are options for placement where you live. The places that I toured before I placed my LO were very nice, professional and designed to care for people who have dementia. I never thought of it as putting her way, but, placing her where she could receive careful, kind care and protection.
Eating and swallowing are the kind of processes that are so instinctive, partly reflex, that it's a challenge remembering that they, too, are controlled by the brain; and so if the brain is diseased they can go wrong - with or without any kind of "deliberate" behaviour on the part of the person. I know it must often feel as though she is picking her moments in order to be difficult, but it's probably more to do with the time of day, or her feeling stressed or rushed - heavens, it could be anything. And it's no good thinking "oh I must relax so that she does too" - not if you do actually have to be somewhere at a particular time.
I see from your profile that your mother has dementia. How long have you been managing her care?
Trying to take care of her on your own may have been the ideal, and it's the choice many of us would love to make if only it were achievable. But you do realise that it will eventually, sooner or later, be both impossible for you and unsafe for her? Have you been looking at possible options?
This may be gettting to be too much for you without help. How can you work and take care of her if she can’t do basic things? Give more details please. Wish the family would help out more. How old are her sisters? Take care.