My Romeo has been a vegetarian since...well, a long time, he tells me. (If you're wondering, I am vegan and gluten-free.) His eating habits are stellar, although he has a sweet tooth that we indulge periodically. Romeo eats nutritiously and has done so for quite some time. So it was quite a shock when he moved into the nursing home, and we discovered that he is the only resident who is vegetarian.Now, you wouldn't think this would be much of a problem -- especially living near Boulder, Colorado, (we're in Longmont, a little east of Boulder) a vegetarian and environmental and spiritual mecca. The reality is that most of the people in Romeo's nursing home are about 20 years older than he, and there aren't many vegetarians in the 85+ age group.
As a result, I'm discovering that most nursing homes are simply naive about vegetarianism and aren't able to deal with serving nutritional vegetarian meals. It's so far out of their box of knowledge that it hasn't yet been institutionalized, perhaps they don't notice the glimmer on the horizon. Romeo's nursing home, at least, has us to practice on. We're the guinea pigs.
What that has meant for us is a lot of heartache and headache, banging our heads against the wall. And for me, being a ruthless advocate for Romeo.
You may think that they could feed him anything on the food cart without meat. Nope, doesn't work. They usually always have salad available. Romeo eats salad only occasionally. Besides, there's much more to vegetarianism than salad. The nursing home is big on white bread. Romeo does wheat, of course. They always have grilled cheese available. He will eat that, unless he notices it's made with white bread. But one week, they served it to him for lunch and dinner for three days in a row. I can't always be there during his mealtimes, of course, so this one got past me until one of the nursing supervisors brought it to my attention. Bless her heart.
Finally, finally, finally, we got to the dietitian on staff to discuss Romeo's diet. She agreed to sit down with us to plan his meals for the week ahead. We do this every week now, and this part of the process has been working well. I expect soon that she won't need to meet with us about this, that she'll have a firm grasp on what Romeo eats. She does a great job of seeing that his meals are nutritious and balanced.
However, there were (and still are at times) other hurdles in the entire food serving process for Romeo. For example, the cooks sometimes didn't prepare what was on his menu, so Romeo would simply not receive the protein portion of his meal. On one occasion, actually during the time he should have been eating lunch, one of the kitchen staff was at the store purchasing the ingredients (again, protein) for Romeo's meal. He had a very late lunch that day.
Another frequent problem involved the staff working the food cart. Their job is to look at his menu for that meal and plate it for him. Except they don't do it very well. They have served him pasta topped with beef tips and gravy. They have served him only asparagus and wheat bread, leaving out the tempeh and quinoa. They have served him meals without any vegetables.
Yet another broken piece of serving vegetarian food to Romeo involves the nursing assistants and nurses who take the food from the cart to Romeo's table. They'll bring him what food service has plated, then with all good intentions, they ask Romeo if everything looks okay. Well, he has dementia and doesn't know what he's supposed to have. Even when I'm with him for a meal, I refer to the menu the dietitian worked up with our help. Who can remember those details from meal to meal, from day to day? Not me. So when Romeo is asked if everything is fine, he says yes, being the British gentleman he is. His plate could come to him missing an important piece of the meal and he wouldn't know. So now a nursing supervisor checks his meal to be sure it's complete and will hunt down the missing parts if it isn't.
Romeo has been living in the nursing home now for more than two months. I think his meal process is pretty much fixed. Things seem to be running a lot better, although there has been an infrequent lapse.
I've beat myself up over this whole thing, I've beat other people up over this whole thing, I've been the advocate from hell. I want things to be right for Romeo. Just as meat eaters deserve to be fed well-balanced, nutritious meals, my Romeo deserves to be fed well-balanced, nutritious vegetarian meals. Any vegetarian in a nursing home deserves to be fed well-balanced, nutritious meals. What's up with vegetarians having to struggle for this? What's the big problem?
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