Yvonne Foong: Fighting NF

Its no surprise that my disappointment with dad when he ate all the chocolate cookies at one shot came across as harsh and even disrespectful. For years, I have been thinking of ways to make my dad’s lifestyle healthier. He is overweight and suffering from Diabetes Mellitus. When I came back from the ABI surgery in October 2006, a friend of mine who started on a high fiber diet inspired me. I made vegetable salad with french dressings and ate lots of fruits. I prepared additional portions for my dad and with extra macaroni or pasta for carbohydrate sometimes.

It sounds all good until I realized preparing food for my dad was also unhealthy. I would bring the ready-made food in a dish to my father who reached out to receive. Sometimes, I would leave the dish on the dining room table before telling him food is ready. It made him passive. Preparing food for my dad released him from the task of deciding for himself what he wanted to eat and when. He would lay across the living room chair like always and seem not to notice the passing of time,

After several months, I stopped making my dad’s meals but I continued to buy fresh vegetables and fruits for myself. I noticed that he is more productive when my father needs to decide when and what he wants to eat and how the food can be gotten. It gets him up from his sleeping position. There is the expected drawback of course. He would now eat anything that comes to mind and sometimes repetitive. For instance, if he goes out to buy a packet of Nasi Lemak for breakfast today, he will eat the same thing for breakfast tomorrow and the day after when he has some pocket money. This was why he finished my chocolate cookies at one shot. He is also pre-occupied with fried food like Curry Puff and other things that the nearby Goreng Pisang aunty sells. On one hand, Dad gets to think for himself what HE wants to eat and exercise his cognitive mind. But it’s very unhealthy.

After returning the responsibility of deciding what to eat back to my father, I refocused all of my attention to college work. We do keep a lot of instant food at home for my father such as instant noodles, biscuits, bread, Milo, and coffee because he wouldn’t or can’t think well enough to cook. If he wants to cook at any time there are a lot of ingredients too, but dad ceased cooking even for himself many years ago. Mom was working 8 hours a day and six days a week so she wasn’t home all the time to cook for dad.

But whenever my mom does cook, and she does it often while she’s not working, she stir-fry everything. This is the main reason I do not eat what my mom cooks. I would rather make my own meals using no oil. I prefer my green vegetables to be as fresh as they can be but mom says they make her stomach bloat. She also eats a lot of carbohydrate which is fattening. Both my parents have high blood pressure and while Mom can still tolerate her own diet, Dad who eats whatever Mom makes may not be so lucky because his health is generally very poor.

So even though I no longer make food for my father, I still continue to tell my mother that too much oil, carbohydrate, salt, and sugar isn’t good. But my mother who lived through post-WWII days in the her childhood thinks little about the culture of healthy living. For someone who had lived through days when food was scarce, having any food at all is luck. Lately, she has been boiling porridge with thin slices of green vegetables in it for Dad which would suffice for both lunch and dinner. Mom doesn’t understand that too much carbohydrate is bad for someone with Diabetes. It will only worsen my father’s gangrene foot. But for my mother. as long as rice does not look like it is topped with refined sugar, she believes that it’s healthy for anyone.

Trying to control Dad’s diet can also feel cruel when he has a craving for sweet, salty, oily, and fattening food. Dad does not seem to understand when I tell him that it’s not good. He would nod and smile but it doesn’t sink it. Since Dad cannot feel why his eating habit is bad, controlling his diet becomes an oppression.

But the biggest dilemma is this : Dad is an adult and human being whose choice and autonomy should be respected. To what extend should our attempts to make his life more healthy go? Or to what extend should we allow his freedom?

I wish I could meet other people whose parents suffered brain hemorrhage and developed cognitive, emotional, and reasoning impairments. It will be nice to share ideas and strategies on how to best care for our parents.

Before going into surgery in May 2009, I asked my friend Lim Tai Lin to drop by our house after work to look at my dad because I was concerned he would be at a lost of what to eat even though mom claimed to have given him several hundred ringgit.. Tai Lin was very kind, she came and even brought some food from Tzu Chi Foundation. Dad ate the Oatmeal and noodles for a start. But when I came back from surgery, I found a large tin of unopened Oatmeal in the living room.

It takes a lot to convince my father into eat anything bland. Adding sugar and fruits won’t help in this case.