 |
 |
Last May I had my first (and last, I hope) experience with making a 911 call for an ambulance. My husband, Neal, (76/11+) began to choke while eating lunch. The result was a dreadful afternoon in the emergency room. I knew what caused it. Sometime during the night before, he had gotten up while half asleep and had taken a double dose of a prescription he uses from time to time to help him sleep. Unfortunately, this was on top of his bedtime dose of a new prescription, Baclofin, that his neuro had prescribed to ease his leg pain. Baclofin is a fairly powerful muscle relaxer. In the morning I found him as limp as a rag doll. He couldn,t sit up without falling over, and he was decidedly not himself. He was acting like a happy drunk. By noon he was a bit better and was able to sit up. I knew he would have trouble using his swallowing muscles and tried to keep his meal soft and without lumps of food. But he managed to find something that got caught in his esophagus. These days I have control of distributing his tranquilizers, the Baclofin is history, and we both rest easier. There have been no more problems with swallowing, but we are now much more aware of problems that may lie ahead and we have been following this discussion with great interest. I was reminded of something I used to enjoy mentioning in my beginning nutrition courses when we discussed digestion. In the latter days of the last century many people were quite concerned with the functioning of their digestive tracts and people went to resorts to take the waters and have high colonic irrigations. One of the fads, or cults, that was popular for a time was that of a man named Fletcher. His program had fairly simple requirements. In order to digest food properly, they believed every mouthful of food had to be chewed a minimum of forty times before swallowing. Aside from taking all day to eat three meals of any substance, it must have been quite a sight to watch a table of Fletcherites at lunch or dinner. Conversation would have been limited and drooling a problem. Fortunately, these days we have a variety of prepared liquid feedings available. I was inspired to look Fletcherism up on the Web this morning, but without luck. But I did run across something that I think would be very useful for those of us who are having problems with chewing and swallowing. At the Kansas University Medical Center's Web site (http://www.humc.edu) I found the Non-Chew Cookbook by J. Randy Wilson. The sample dishes and recipes looked inviting and there were endorsements aplenty by Dental and Dietetic professionals. http://www.rof.net/yp/randyw/ (This, and a short essay on Eating and Swallowing were in the area devoted to Huntingtons Disease.) Martha ([log in to unmask])