My mother, 88, now in a nursing home, has never been a frequent pooper. Even when I cared for her and she was eating quite well she'd only go every 2 or 3 days. In the past 18 months she's broken a hip, had another stroke, some TIAs and her dementia has escalated.
She's now either in bed or her wheelchair (mostly bed) unable to sit up or stand and what little speech she has is somewhat garbled. As she likes her door closed the staff check in on her periodically. A vegetarian, she likes oatmeal and will eat breakfast, refuses lunch and will go to supper. She's skin and bone, eats very little and now weighs less than my Labrador. I was taking her lunch but she eventually refused to eat it. The NH provides a lot of juice and vitamin shakes and I stock her up with juice, bottled water, fruit and V8.
Needless to say she rarely poops as she's inactive and eats so little so, from time to time, she's given a laxative and then she explodes - diarrhea all over her and the bed such that they have to get out of bed with a hoist to clean it all up. My thought is that the pain, strain and embarrassment of a laxative explosion are harder on her than not pooping when she's not got much inside her to poop anyway. Your thoughts?
She desperately wants to go to a hairdresser in the next village (doesn't like the way the NH hairdresser does it) so I've made her an appointment for next week, booked the paratransit bus (with physical issues, I can't lift her) to take her and paid the hairdresser so all she has to do is go. I'll follow the bus and be there with her. If she doesn't go it's given her something to look forward to.
I feel her time may be coming near and I dread the phone ringing, just go one day at a time.
It now takes her half n hour or more to eat half a sandwich and I expect she'll soon be moved to the second dining room where residents are fed one on one.