I have two caregivers, one from Monday through Friday and the other on Saturday and Sunday. My mother liked the one during the week more than the one on the weekend. I like both CNAs and think they are wonderful with my parents (my father has dementia and is bedridden and my mother has mobility issues). My mother tells the caregivers to wake my father up to eat or to change him. When they wake him, he becomes angry and lashes out. So it is best to let him wake up naturally. But he may sleep past breakfast or past lunch. The nurse has even told my mother to let him sleep. My mother prods the weekday caregiver to wake him up and my mother is sometimes, no most of the time, not very nice to the caregiver over this. Well, this evening when I went to give my mother her evening medicine she mentioned how she does not like the caregiver because she doesn't do what she asked for my father. I asked my mother does she want to get someone else and she said no. I can't rely on what she says because she switches things around, one week she likes this one and the next week she doesn't. My mother got very angry at me because I told her I don't like to hear negative talk about the caregivers and I will investigate myself. She said I was a bad daughter and exclaimed, I am your mother! Like how dare I disagree with her. She talks to me as if I were a child and does not want to hear anything that is a contrary opinion. I do a tremendous amount for my parents but I find her to be rude. Every single day, either morning or evening, we have some sort of tiff over what has transpired during the day. I believe that the caregivers have a very difficult job and I don't want my mother to be rude to them. How can I handle this? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.
I have had caregivers tell me how much they care about the patient even when they only just met the patient. Clearly, they aren't being truthful. I have had caregivers try to watch TV or be on their phones most of the time. I have had caregivers try to feed the patient Boost or Ensure, processed drinks that are basically made of pro-inflammatory refined sugars, pro-inflammatory vegetable oils, and a vitamin/mineral pill. I even had one caregiver tell me that she had one patient survive 10 years consuming only Boost. I thought, "In spite of consuming Boost." These drinks are harmful to health, especially the elderly who often times have diabetes. If the elderly can't consume solid food, then they should be fed things such as homemade bone broths and green vegetable smoothies, not sugared junk.
Yes, the elderly can be stubborn. When I was hospitalized not that long ago, I was put on a ward that had a few elderly. They were VERY difficult. The woman next to me would refuse to be changed. She would try to hit and bite the nurses. One women down the hall peed all other herself when she first came. She screamed constantly for days. There was always at least one nurse with her. I was told that she wasn't in pain, that she was confused and didn't understand where she was. We lived with the noise because we understood.
They only way to fix the situation is to look around for a good agency, establish rules, and fire the ones who don't follow the rules.
Sad to say. It doesn't sound like your parents have that much longer to live. Try to make the best of it.
Nutritional drinks are not harmful to health. While they are not the best thing for a healthy younger adult, they are basically expensive sugar milk afterall. For a elderly person who can't or won't eat enough, they are a lifesaver. In that case, "bone broths and green vegetable smoothies" is the fast lane to starvation.
And, yes, refined sugars are very harmful to the health. Ensure contains maltodextrin, which can have the highest glycemic index among all the sweeteners. Two and a half weeks of consuming maltodextrin gave me systemic inflammation in my muscles, tendons, joints, right eye, and kidneys. I ended up being housebound/bedridden for six months. I could not lift my right arm. I could not move my neck. I felt like I was walking on stones. If I hadn't figured it out in time, I'd be dead. That was from January to June of 2017. Once the inflammation past, I started training for a triathlon. I completed my first triathlon in November 2017. I don't consume any refined sugars. I don't consume starchy vegetables, and I can do a triathlon. The elderly simply don't need that much sugar. If you want to give them calories than add coconut oil or avocado oil to the drinks. These oils are healthy fats that will help with cognitive issues. If they can consume solid foods, then small, fatty fish is very high in omega-3s and very beneficial to the brain.
sugar-and-sweetener-guide.com/glycemic-index-for-sweeteners.html
"Undernutrition is a risk factor for increased mortality in older adults. Therapeutic intervention includes the administration of liquid dietary supplements."
academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/75/5/944/4689411
Once again, you are talking about otherwise healthy adults. For someone who is not eating enough and can't or refuses to, nutritional drinks are the difference between life and death. While you personal experience might apply to you, if you aren't a elderly person who refuses to/can't eat and weighs 75 pounds, then it surely doesn't apply to them. In their case, starvation is the problem.
nps.org.au/australian-prescriber/articles/malnutrition-and-nutritional-supplements
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24154647
I was hospitalized three times during that flareup, each time for two weeks. I would have been hospitalized even longer, but doctors don't want people with Ulcerative Colitis in the hospital because we are on immune suppressants to shut down our immunity so our bodies will stop attacking themselves. So our doctors send us home as soon as our condition stabilizes even if we are still in extreme pain. They don't want us to pick up a virus in the hospital, which could end up being life-threatening.
There was a point in which my colon was so swollen that I was hooked up to an IV in the hospital for a week not consuming anything and I was down to 90 pounds (I'm 5'7"). I was extremely dehydrated and malnourished. During that flareup, I had one blood transfusion, six iron IVs, countless potassium IVs, countless magnesium IVs, tons of fluid IVs, Remicade infusions, oral 6MP, steroid IVs, oral steroids, rectal steroids, oral 5-ASAs, rectal 5-ASAs, pain killers, immunizations to protect against viruses, ... I also had a silent heart attack sometime during that flareup due to not having enough water and electrolytes, which were not being absorbed by the colon. So, yes, I know a lot about under-nutrition.
After my last hospital stay, one of my GI's (gastroenterologists) recommended Ensure. I looked it up and checked the ingredients and saw the high amount of sugar and processed ingredients that Ensure contained. When I told my GI about the maltodextrin, she was shocked. Maltodextrin is pro-inflammatory, I have an inflammatory disease, and she was recommending Ensure. She told me that she didn't know because she hadn't read the ingredients. Ensure was being marketed to them [her and her fellow doctors] as a "nutrition" drink for people who are malnourished. That's why she recommended it.
BTW, maltodextrin is put into sports drinks because it is so quickly absorbed into the blood stream. That's what it means to have a high glycemic index. And this is what makes maltodextrin so harmful, especially to those who suffer from inflammatory diseases and diabetes.
I switched from the Low FodMap Diet (for gastrointestinal issues) to the Autoimmune Paleo Diet (for autoimmune diseases) and Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) (for digestive diseases) and gradually got better. I consumed homemade bone broths and then homemade bone broth soups containing meat (such as ox tail and chicken) with bones and veggies such as carrots and cabbage. Ox tail is quite fatty. It contains calories. As I got better, I added homemade coconut smoothies, which are made from coconut cream, bananas, and berries. Plenty of calories. I then added bananas with homemade macadamia nut butter. Again, plenty of calories. Later, I added homemade avocado dip with homemade carrot chips. Again, plenty of calories.
The last flareup I had, the extra-intestinal, systemic one (muscles, tendons, joints, right eye, and kidneys), I got from consuming maltodextrin. I had a slight cold and was chewing herbal cough drops--the ones that have a picture of herbs on the package. Starch sugar and sugar are listed as inactive ingredients. I assumed that meant less ingredients. Not. It turned out that more than 99% of the cough drops were starch sugar from corn (maltodextrin) and sugar. I know this because I contacted the company after I found out the pain I had was due to inflammation.
Almost all chronic disease today is due to SAD, the Standard American Diet--a diet high in sugar and processed ingredients, and the lack of exercise. Ensure is a processed, sugared drink with added vitamins/minerals. It's convenient. It's not healthy. For the life of me, I can't understand how anyone can think refined sugar would be healthy.