This is a serious, genuine inquiry. I'm not just sniping at my MIL. She is 81. She's a handful. Lives in her home, with a full-time caregiver/companion whose main duty is to make a fuss of MIL and pay constant attention to her. It's more personality issues than dementia.
However, MIL has never had a sweet tooth that I remember and I've known her for 34 years. She takes tea and coffee black, without sugar. Not big on desserts or cakes, never noticed her tucking into petits fours after dinner. The most I've ever seen her enjoying is plain, boring shortbread and for a reasonable cook, she's never had any interest in baking or in serving proper puddings at family meals (humph!).
All of a sudden she's almost literally taking candy from babies in her craving for chocolate and it emerges that she flips out if she goes to a house where there isn't Diet Coke and ice cream available. As told to me separately, by my BIL and my son, rolling their eyes.
It isn't that I don't see why a woman of 81 shouldn't have as much ice cream as she likes. It's the radical change in palate, and the somewhat extreme appetite for sweet things that's troubling me. Shouldn't it be reported to her primary?
She is 90. She is underweight. I figure at this point...anything I can do to increase her calories is good. Boost with chocolate syrup and ice cream in the blender..... chocolate deserts after dinner. I throw vitamins into the cake mix...add a little extra buttermilk to the drink...anything to up the calories...
BB - no chance, no. I emailed her a research paper from the Weizmann Institute this morning, and I've just had her reply saying "gosh how interesting I'm going to ignore that thanks." Ugh. I mean, she has a First Class Honours degree in Pharmacology - I don't expect her to take my word for anything medical or scientific, obviously. But these people aren't cranks or amateurs. Doesn't she care what they have to say?
What leaves me dissatisfied is that if MIL had always enjoyed moderate quantities of sweet things it would make sense that she'd eat more of them as other flavours diminished. It's that never having been bothered at all, not so you'd notice, she's now gorging. Or, at least, when I say gorging - she didn't wait as everyone else did until the Easter egg hunt was over, she started noshing as soon as she found her first one and kept going all the way through. She swiped somebody else's chocolate rabbit at the dining table (!). She was seeking reassurance that there was ice cream for dessert while we were still on our appetisers.
It's just so out of character. Not the being a bit selfish part, I'm sorry to say, but the undignified gluttony in front of other people part, and for childish sugary stuff.
I think something's gone wrong in her brain. If anyone knows of any really authoritative sources working on this I'd be grateful and will try again to pass them on. Otherwise, then it'll have to be a case of "not my circus", I'm afraid.
Life is weird, and I think we all know that.
My friend's mother, in her final year of life, went crazy for Lindt chocolate (which I understand, those truffles are amazing). This lady would give money to the kids she KNEW would buy her a couple bags of them. (She had grown up as a farm wife and they never had sugary things.) After she passed, my friend went to retrieve her personal belongings from the NH, and found...hundreds of Lindt chocolates in her bedside table. She also discovered that her mother had been eating these to the exclusion of almost everything else. What did it matter, in the end? She went out with chocolate on her face and a smile.
Mom barely touched her dinner at Easter but then erupted into a chant of I want cake - I want cake - I want cake when dessert was mentioned
Of course she has had a sweet tooth all her life too
I know this is nothing new to you, of all people; but it's the... ohhhh, even writing it down seems futile. It's the frustration of this inability to make her understand that it is not only her needs that have to be considered and it isn't only for her sake that the family needs to have some idea of her true state of health.
I could start sending her cakes and chocolates. But that would be a bit evil of me...🐒
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