I've tried putting a flavoring in her water. I enlisted her for ideas as to what we can do here to get her to drink water, thinking that having her part of the process would help. I tried giving her one glass of water after breakfast and one after lunch. I told her that dehydration was an agonizing way to die. (That she responded to once.) She was in great pain from having a difficult bowel movement and promised to start drinking water.
Still.......she refuses to drink water. Could this be her way of saying she wants to die?
I don't know what to do anymore....
cadams
My husband didn't like drinking water but he liked V-8 with Tabasco in it, and grapefruit juice, and milkshakes, and tea, and beer or wine once a day, and milk on his cereal ... he pretty much had something that he liked available to drink all day.
My mother has never been a water drinker. Her nursing home offers several beverage choices at each meal, and snack cart comes around offering small cans of pop or juice twice a day. They also serve melon and soup and canned and fresh fruit and lots of opportunity for the residents to keep hydrated.
Except in hot weather, I drink about 12 ounces of water a day -- the amount it takes to swallow my pills. But I am seldom without a glass or cup of something to drink, and I eat lots of fruits and vegetables. I don't think I am in any danger of dehydration. Your mother may be at greater risk, but if she resists water, work harder on other ways to get the liquid in.
Does your Mother drink anything and it's just water that she has problems with? Or she doesn't drink at all and you have to watch her get any fluids at all?
After the incontinence clinic explained how she is working against her health by not drinking, it helped get the point home. So, now, two different doctors and the incontinence clinic have insisted on her adding liquids and it's sinking in. Repetition from professionals has helped outweigh her fear or additional bathroom visits.
I have a two-liter water bottle. I have measured and marked it at every 10 ounces so she can see how much she really drinks, every day. Every day for awhile, at the end of the day, I showed her how little she'd consumed and part of her problem was that she thought she was drinking more than she really was. That also helped it hit home with her. Her memory is bad, too, so reminding her every day for a few weeks was required.
Now, almost all beverages come out of that bottle, but when she drinks milk or something else not made from water in that bottle, we pour out a glass worth from her water bottle. That helps her see how little she was drinking. Every night when she goes to bed, I fill it back to the 65 ounce mark and she sometimes gets up during the night and drinks some from it.
She does also sip, which the clinic stressed is the right way to do it, not gulping.
Also, I find if I make her a cup of tea that it's more interesting to her than a glass of water, but I make the simplest herbal teas (plain rooibos, plain mint) or decaffeinated teas. Sometimes, I'll make her decaffeinated coffee from her jug. A little variety helps.
In the summer, I make a jug of sweetened herbal tea and she'll have about a glass of that per day, once again, we throw out a glass of water from her jug.
I know it seems like we waste a lot of water, but it's not as much as it sounds like. Most days we don't throw any of it away. And it's really the easiest most visual way for her to understand and keep track of her consumption.
Anyhow, the nurse explained to me that when the body gets dehydrated, it learns to live on what it's got. She said that if one forced two glasses of water on someone like that, it might actually kill them because their tissues wouldn't be prepared to assimilate all of it quickly enough.
I keep a screw-on-top plastic tumbler by mom always -- filled with ice water. (She recuperated, by the way, after we held her meds.) In my little mind, if she stops drinking? She's probably on life's edge. She certainly was that time.
I don't KNOW this, but I'd imagine if someone's kidneys were in bad shape and unable to handle much water, a person's thirst would disappear...
I'm not much of a water drinker. But as a kid I use to because Mom always made Kool-Aid :)