UnAided Eating

 Miss Brown didn't have much appetite after she was discharged from the hospital, she says. Not that she didn't get hungry. She did. 

But first of all, there were all these rules and she didn't know what she could eat and what she couldn't and she didn't want to know why she couldn't eat this and why she had to eat other kinds of stuff.

 

And she didn't feel like eating puree or anything soft and mushy even though she had problems swallowing even plain water. Neither was she going to settle for that nasty tube down her nose again, no way.

 

So it was a dilemma.

 

A dilemma that she had to solve with herself and with her caregivers because they'd decided that she'd come home instead of going to the assigned community hospital. She didn't mind. She preferred being at home anyway. Later she would wonder how things would have been had she gone there instead, but those thoughts would only come much, much later. Back then she was certain she preferred being at home, surrounded by her own things, with her own bed and her own furniture and everything that she was familiar with.

 

They gave this thing to her when she was still the hospital. It was supposed to thicken everything she put in her mouth and so she would be able to eat her food and drink liquids and all.

 

 

It was okay, she says... just that it made water look funny. As if someone had dumped a cupful of starch into the water. Soups got thicker. Milk got thicker. Everything she ate looked thicker. Even porridge. (But she can't quite remember what she ate in the first few days.)

What she does remember is trying to make her way around her cluttered kitchen because she suddenly wished to make a pot of soup. Why exactly, and what soup she wanted to make, she doesn't know. 

Of course the pot of soup never materialized that day. She tired out just trying to open the fridge and pull out the ingredients. 

 

No one seemed to know precisely what suited her. Sure, there was the advice from the dietician and the nutritionist but somehow the paper had gotten lost. There was a big packet of 3-in-1 sweetened cereal and she took a few packets of that and it was sweet but rough on her throat. Her caregiver got her cups of organic cinnamon oatmeal porridge which was supposedly filling, and she tried, but the oatmeal was... oatmeal. Miss Brown didn't fancy it very much.

Her caregiver got her this too.. this plastic jar that had such a pretty wrapper round it.

 

Supposedly meant for her to consume in case she didn't want to eat solid food or porridge or soup or whatever, Miss Brown maintains that this free-this-free-that thing was not one of her favorites and if she had a choice, she was not going to eat it again. Ever.