Sippy cups for PD adult?

[Kat343]

Hello all, I could not find anything on the forum about adult 'sippy' cups so I'm asking. My HWP is having difficulty at times lately using a straw (has been using straws for months). FYI, I use cane sugar straws, compostable, sturdy and good in warm drinks. But, he's not able to suck enough at times so I'm wondering if there are better alternatives. I found cups on Amazon, but just thought I'd check out if anyone has an opinion on this. He does not have tremors, so a two handled one is not necessary, but would be fine. Plus, I try and stay clear of bad plastics, etc, which complicates choices. He does voice and breath training as well. Thank you dear people. Lets all have a good day!

[Boscoejean]

maybe do a search for nontoxic or ecofriendly adult sippy cup

[Kat343 in reply to Boscoejean]

Thank you, I did find one that was stainless steel... but I will do that, thanks!!

[Hope-full1970]

How about a YETI cup? They have one with a handle. They work great!

[Kat343 in reply to Hope-full1970]

I will check that out, but he does have problems wiht regular water bottles in general. Tho expensive, Yetis are great! Thank you!

[MarionP]

Go to "google.com"

Google the following search terms (and you can play around with variants or Google's AI will suggest additional searches):

"active drinking cups for adults"

"Physical therapy occupational therapy sippy cups".

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These should start you on your way. Different breadcrumb trails.

Ideally, you would actually call around to local health supply companies, doctors' offices, or Google "physical therapists occupational therapists near me" and buy an hour of assessment or ask for a referral to assess his adaptive drinking needs and a "dysphagia/"feeding swallowing assessment"" or screening or whatever term they like, (which would be the more appropriate inclusive starting point, and would result in recommendations for adaptive drinking cups and other appropriate aids, identify needs so that any uncovered needs to keep from choking or aspirating are identified, which could be very serious needs. The last thing he needs is "aspiration pneumonia." Aspiration pneumonia or dysphagia can lead to some really serious medical downturns and you could be on the brink of them now.

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Alternatively you look for to call around to see if there are any community care resources for adults or social work equivalents, you can perhaps start on a trail there..

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Or look up any assisted living centers near where you are and asked to talk to one of their social workers or dietitian or physical therapist for a chat. Can point you along the way and I'm sure plenty would be happy to do so. 5-minute conversation.

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Or simply start off by calling your own doctor's office for some referrals.

[Kat343 in reply to MarionP]

Thank you Marion! Yes, something that sounds so simple is not. I reached out to his speech therapist two days ago, who did not have a recommendation - which was interesting since I think he's probably the most brilliant of any of my husbands providers! He helped me search as well and he wants to know what we think is the best. But, I'm also looking for platinum or at least food grade silicone with stainless steel, so that narrows down the pickings (we Americans average a credit card worth a week of plastic ingested in our bodies). I just got him a cheap sippy cup yesterday that had a silicone insert at the inside tip, but he could not suck hard enough. I removed the tip and just gave it to him with the hole (it will leak if dropped) and he seems to like it. So I'm having him use it today to see if this type might be best and ordered 2 other types of cups to see which may work best. I thank you for the suggestions and there is alot of info out there (the therapist said to search for dysphagia cups), but that brought up about the same results as the other searches. I'll reply back when we find the best solution!

[MarionP in reply to Kat343]

Choking and aspiration from swallowing problems is extremely serious, you can lose a person's life in a single event, and afterward be left asking in perplexity, "what happened?!"

A proper dysphagia exam includes an x-ray videography of his swallowing response and what happens with drinks boluses etc and it's really interesting and fun to watch and extremely helpful to a professional who knows something about it. I'm sorry your speech therapist or speech pathologist or whatever he claims to have as a specialty is so uninformed, without making so much as a proper specialist referral, and I would not be stopping there and continuing just on my own. Your husband's life and whether he suffers through it everyday by choking and eventually malnutrition or not can very well depend on it, so if you can find somebody to do that radiography and videography and developing a professional based plan then I think you are better off.

Just try choking and aspirating or not being able to get something down and getting it down your windpipe and then having it stuck there even, sometime, see how you like it! And stop being so helpless as to stop with a half assed non committal. As a practicing professional for 35 years perhaps I was lucky to be trained well enough to positively not allow that of myself and I certainly didn't allow it in my colleagues, I would dig and bug them until we got on a trail and or got to people who could get on that trail and do the rule outs, and my little comment to you, which is about empathy after all, is the reason why I did that and the reason why you should keep at it. If you're getting tired and frustrated, which I would be I think, get a therapist, don't take it out in your husband or go into it with fake helplessness, that's a subtle defense born of depression and frustration and just plain being worn out and worn down, it can happen anytime it is subtle, it's very possible to happen without you having any idea that it is, and it's displaced onto the victim. Yes you are a victim too but sticking it to the other victim is not the solution, at least it's not a humane one. I ran into a lot of passive displaced hostility born of frustration in partners in my career... they needed some support and help and nobody seemed to realize it. And if that's what's going on with you then it's a form of passive helplessness that can undermine everybody Is that appropriate do you think? Sorry to be hard on you but wake up and get moving. Can't solve a problem before you know what's wrong, and you can't know what's wrong until you KNOW what's wrong. .

You can pass on to your speech friend that an untrained professional has not yet justified his professional existence, no matter how many years he's been taking money. Why is it so many people in the professions these days get away with not giving a rat's ass? Doesn't sound so "brilliant" to me. Pros do not have an excuse, they went into the program, this comes with the territory, plus they are paid for their time and trouble. And they know they don't have an excuse. And stylistically impressing patients who have no basis to know competent from not is hardly an excuse either.

Meanwhile I also hope you are talking to somebody who can give or coordinate some supports to you too, caregivers like spouses are so often left out in the cold and it's like they're drowning whilst in a crowd.

[Kat343 in reply to MarionP]

HI Marion, I super appreciate your passion. Hubby went thru the swallowing Xray tests in April and did have a little issue, I'd have to look at the papers for the exact issue - I think it was his second stage of swallowing. I do watch him very carefully when he seems to be a little off, and help him to keep his head more in line, take small sips, swallow hard, etc. But he does seem to be having more issues with swallowing, so I think it wise to ask for another swallow test and I appreciate you encouraging that. Plus he drools a lot. We were going to have the botox injections, but spoke to a couple of docs about it and they were really on the fence about getting it and there were some negative results that I found on HU. If you have any insights on that, I'd sure appreciate it. Sorry for the delay, no matter how often I try and change my account here on HU to get notifications, I am unable to and we were out of town this past week. I will reach out to his neuro team about recommending a good cup. As far as my mental health, yes, this is not ... fun, but my husband is the best man I've ever met and its a true honor to be his caregiver and I have fallen in love with him even more these past 2 years. Thank you for your concern because it is hard and I do have a hard time asking for help.... but mostly I just focus on being grateful for this time, having him still here, and that I'm learning to be a better person. Thank you Marion! I think you must be a good parent if you have kids, tough love is a good thing!

[MarionP in reply to Kat343]

🙂 depends on the results of course, some people like straws, sometimes plastic straws or paper straws or metal straws, straws that can be twisted into the directions that make the best sense, sometimes the liquids can be thickened but the thickening really should be adjusted so that it is functional for him, and I once her to patient say "things would be better but once my dietitian discovered thickening, now all they ever give me is thickened stuff, like I'm now in thickened Guantanamo prison, I don't always want to be sucking a malt or starch through a straw, let's have a little sense of proportion here." So there's that I can offer. .

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The point is, you want to be seeking and observing so that you get continuous feedback, ongoing feedback from the person and from your own eyes, so that you can adjust or "titrate" is important and asking for feedback is really important... But also if somebody is giving them thickened fluids as their food sometimes or their liquids sometimes, maybe the idea isn't to go from zero thickened to 100% thickened all the time every day forever, well intentioned torture substituted for well-intentioned whatever. It's a process and it's an ongoing chained process, not a "once and then we're quit and forget about it" process. Like driving down the road in a car, keeping in the lanes and dealing with traffic and roadway signs and stop lights etc, and dealing in the flow continuously until you get there, but of course you know we will never finally get there, so it's you know like breathing like putting on your pants, I like walking around somewhere, it's an ongoing process, and its therefore dynamic. Always be willing to adjust and always be looking for clues to tell you you should, not just passively waiting for the person to tell you because maybe they can't... And while we're on the subject, you know a cat or a dog can't change their facial expression so you can't get anything out of it that tells you whether they're happy or they're in torture so you have to be more inquisitive yourself and find other ways. Now my father who had parkinson's, he had Frozen Face so we also couldn't get from his expressions whether something was working or needed to be adjusted. We also couldn't tell whether he was being good old dad or an a******, because he had both in his personality and we couldn't tell by his facial expressions. We had to be thoughtful, imaginative, inquisitive, curious, and not too quick to conclude her judge, we needed to go buy evidence and some exercising of our intuition muscle. The thing is everything is an ongoing dynamic feedback exchange chained into the future forever and that's the attitude you have to have, like keeping your car on the road from London to Luton.

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Really that's all I can think of to offer more than I already have, and you notice it's to a good extent about your attitude and your own observational drive. You know that can make all the difference. And I got this experience by doing some caretaking myself, but also by inspecting nursing homes with people who have developmental disabilities and they could not tell you oh they were feeling or how this adjustment was working out for them or how to articulate just exactly what wasn't working, and you know I've seen that too with pets who can't change their expression really not like we can so you can't just get it from that either, you have to actively inquire and observe. But if you do you are better than 90% of the professionals out there..

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Now when you say he's had the X-ray assessment, I'm assuming that you got for that what amounts to a movie so you can see what happens from passing lips to creating bolas to swallowing to where it goes down and how the muscles on the way handle it or catch it.. the only thing I can tell you there is that's what you want, not still pictures, Plus it needs to be done periodically because things progress and change and so does their mechanism, thus so do the needs and not meeting the needs once they have changed it's bad bad news. So unfortunately that's part of the territory, because this thing is progressive it doesn't stay the same for very long, eventually you have to know the changes and to know them you have to do periodic assessments, . Periodic Swallowing movies and that's kind of the landscape too.

[Kat343 in reply to MarionP]

Hi Marion, I like your analogy of driving and being aware of all around you and that will help me as my HwP has never been able to describe much to me about his condiment - and was not good at it even before he got this disease.

Yes, he had the 'live action' barium swallow study in April and I wrote to his Neurologist nurse right after you suggested it and she ordered him another one that day! It should get done before the end the year (we live in a rural area) so hopefully we can see any changes. I have not used the thickener on him yet, but will start - and not overdose him on it - thanks of rsaying that. Because there are times when he can swallow better than others. Thanks again for all the advice, I love the people on this forum!

[Quiveringwreck]

Best thing that we have found is a straw - bendy obea .

[Kat343 in reply to Quiveringwreck]

Thanks, those look fun as well. Appreciate you!