By Grace Grzanek –
April 15 marked three years that Eddie has lived in his memory care nursing facility in southeast Aurora.
Not once in those three years has he been offered a fresh tomato, or a fresh carrot, or a fresh mushroom, or a fresh piece of celery or any vegetable that is fresh! As a resident in that memory care nursing home, he is forced to be satisfied, daily, with something that once was food, but since has been processed into a box, a bag, or a can, then delivered to the nursing home by an industry named as food service, where the nursing home simply microwaves or further reheats the erstwhile “food.”
The lunch menu is tater tots, fried onion rings, chili dogs, sloppy joes, fries, chips, noodles, deli meat, and white bread sandwiches. Something labeled as pork loin is served so overheated and rock hard that even I, with a steak knife, cannot cut it, much less try to eat it. Something labeled as a vegetable blend is comprised of what used to be vegetables, but is now a blend of mush. Never a smacking of anything nutritious! All the nutrients are dead! How can this stuff bring life to sick people?
I mention this because recently, that same nursing home invited outsiders to a seminar they offered on depression in elderly persons, who happen to be the very persons living there, conveniently ignored, and the guest table for this seminar was heaped with fresh roulades of lettuce, tomato, cheese, turkey, and laden with platters of fresh carrots, tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, a feast of freshness, while the residents were being served overheated processed turkey, blobs of white-bread stuffing with not a trace of fresh onion, celery, or any other veggie in sight in it, and mushed up, overcooked corn kernels.
I spotted the veritable feast for the outsiders and surreptitiously heaped myself a plate of fresh veggies and roulades and took it into the nursing home’s residents’ area, where the residents were about to eat what’s called their dinner. I offered these refreshing surprises to Eddie and his tablemate, Greg. The latter, at age 59, who, after a fall that injured his brain and forced him to be relegated to living in memory care forever, is severely depressed. Before saying goodnight to me, he indicated that he did not expect to be alive tomorrow when I came back. (The irony! And the hubris of a company that pretends to address the concern called “depression” and completely ignores their own depressed residents!) Both men hungrily gobbled down the fresh treats I brought in from the seminar for outsiders.
Eddie is allergic to sugar. Dementia is, after all, now being identified as Type Three Diabetes. It makes sense that persons with dementia are allergic to sugar. They cannot properly process insulin, and the brain is the part of their body that takes the beating. Yet all these residents get for dessert at this nursing home are pies and cakes and sugar-canned fruit. Drinks are colored sugared water named as pink lemonade or orange juice (without a real orange within 800 miles of it.)
Eddie, because of family insistence that his sugar allergy be honored, receives a dessert of fresh fruit from another building. Greg sees Eddie’s dessert and salivates, and begs for just one little piece of melon!
Melon is so delicious, Greg exclaims. He begs another slice from Eddie’s bowl. Eddie gladly shares.
This lack of nutrition and true nourishment in the southeast Aurora memory care facility, as well as in many other similar Fox Valley eldercare facilities and in our Fox Valley area hospitals, is nutritional abuse of our elderly.
It is not a one-time occurrence. I know. I see first hand what is going on. I am there almost every day.
Eddie is my 98-year-old husband.
Grace Grzanek
The Just Food Initiative of the Fox Valley
Batavia
