Eating the napkin

Priscilla walked into the kitchen and said, “No more cloth napkins.”

She had wheeled Mrs. R. to the dining room table and lunch – Manwich, soft beans and french fries not crisply cooked. I was fixing my plate of the same.

“Is she trying to tear up her napkin?” I asked.

Priscilla nodded. “She’s trying to take out the stitches with a fork.”

Mrs. R. had recently done similar things – trying to pull napkin apart, using a fork to remove fringed edges of another napkin, a couple of times spreading her napkin on the table and trying to transfer her plate and glass from the place mat.

This time, Priscilla put Mrs. R.’s cloth napkin on the counter and tore off two paper towels from the roll on the counter.

I fixed my plate and went to the table. Mrs. R. had taken her sandwich apart and was scraping at the inside with her fork. Then she took a paper towel and tore off part of it and put the paper on her sandwich.

My reaction was the same as when our kids did that sort of thing at age 2 or 3. I took the paper from the sandwich and said, “This is not lettuce. This is paper. You will not eat paper.”

Mrs. R. just looked at me. She tore off another piece of paper towel. I took that piece and the other paper towel and put it all at the other end of the table. “You will not eat paper,” I said.

Janice, the CNA, arrived later. Priscilla told Janice of Mrs. R.’s trying to eat the paper towel. Janice said that is common among dementia patients. Janice also said we will have to watch Mrs. R., because she will try to eat her socks.