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My MIL 89 with advanced vascular dementia, shovels food into her mouth at an alarming rate. Today she ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in about six minutes flat. I cut her food up and mash it have given smaller portions have given a smaller fork, but it’s like she’s in a race to get her food down to the point where she chokes . She will not/can not comprehend or listen when we ask her to slow down. We encourage her to take a drink to wash the food down, have taken her fork away until she’s chews and swallows but then she gets defiant and flatly refuses. Is anyone else having these issues and can give me any advice? Thank you.

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I'm with lealonnie, my mom did choke several times before we realized we needed to modify her diet and it was terrible.
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Margaret, I'd have PTSD for life if my loved one choked to death at the dinner table! 😑
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I personally have always been a fast eater, so to me 6 minutes does not sound like someone is "shoveling" food into their mouth, as I could have one down(if I liked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches)in about 2-3 minutes if that.
But if you are concerned about how your MIL is eating then perhaps it best that someone actually feeds her thus allowing her to get just one bite at a time and not shoving things in her mouth.
And the fact that she may be choking is very common with folks with dementia and may have absolutely nothing with her eating too fast, but instead of the fact that when one's brain is broken the brain forgets to tell the throat to close thus allowing food to get into the lungs and aspiration pneumonia can then occur, which in most cases is deadly.
So I would make sure at this point that you're feeding your MIL only pureed foods and thickening her drinks with the product Thick-It, as that will help keep her from aspirating her food.
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We use ‘sporks’ all the time, DH finds them easier with his long term false teeth. I don’t think they would make it “harder for her to pick up her food”, probably easier. We call them ‘splades’, but Google says that’s the same thing.

If MIL is “89 with advanced vascular dementia”, and that’s the way she wants to eat, is it really a problem if she chokes? Perhaps this is just one more thing that’s not worth a battle about.
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Thank you for the ideas!
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Sounds like you might have to start, feeding her just one bite at a time, or give Mom more things like yoghurt, and mashed potatoes. Which also just gave me an idea, use spoons or even those fast food sporks, it might be harder for her to pick up her food, so she may eat slower.

I was taking care of this lady once, she was amazing at taking her meds. Your give her a hand full of meds and water, she would throw them all back, with water and they were gone. Well one day I gave her meds to her, turned around, looked back , the poor thing, forgot to swallow and started to chew, I felt so bad for her.

Not what your going through, but shows you you never know what is going to be forgotten next.
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