Sometimes my father plays with his food

Sometimes my father plays with his food, originally uploaded by Susan NYC.

You have to be desperate to eat this stuff. My father can't swallow well, so they give him chopped food. He gets hungry, but they give him very little that's appetizing. It seems he'd rather starve than eat unappetizing food. He's down to 122 pounds now, from 127 a few weeks ago. His old constant was 145, then 135......

Some chopped food tastes fine, but a lot of it tastes awful. The cookie, for example, was a normal cookie, but chopped, it's bad.

Fish was on his menu, but it didn't appear. He really loves fish. He's supposed to get fish a few times a week. This meal doesn't include any entree at all. I put the bread in the empty space.


One of the women at my father's table got this same chopped dinner. She'd gobbled up her pureed onion soup (as had my dad), and she took one look at the plate and said, "What is this shit! Take it away." She refused to calm down until an aide removed the offending plate. The woman ate a tuna salad sandwich they gave her. I don't know if my father would've eaten one.