Day before yesterday, Mom was doing enough better that they were going to let her go back to the assissated-living center. ...But when they did that one-more-check immediately before leaving, she had a fever and her blood pressure was back up where it shouldn't be. The doc put her on yet another medication for that and Mom decided to stay until she (and they) learned how well it was going to work and check for side-effects.
At least the hospital food is better. So far, every assisted living or post-surgical "rehab center" she has found, which includes some very nice ones, has not done all that great a job providing a low-salt diet. Feeding a few hundred or a thousand people necessarily involves some amount of processed foods and it would appear the low-salt version of those giant-sized canned veggies (etc.) is pretty uncommon. Hospitals are spending (and charging) more to feed you, but their stakes are higher if they get it wrong, so between that and the higher price, they get it right. The "senior warehouse" places, not so much.
That's interesting, about the hospital meals being salty. I tend to be v. conscious of such things as I have high blood pressure, and one of the ways I control it is by eating a very low-salt (and high-vegetable, ugh) diet. I often wondered what would happen if I had to eat "institutional" food for any length of time.
ReplyDeleteI will make exceptions to the diet for an exceptionally good restaurant or something like Christmas dinner, but most of the time I'm pretty strict and hyper about it.
That's kind of odd. Every hospital I've been "in" around Cincy and Dayton (some for me, some for my mom, etc.) have ALL had food with low salt and bland as heck taste. Just assumed that all hospitals and nursing homes had the same thing.
ReplyDeleteHospital, yes; assisted care center for senior citizens, no.
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