I have turned into The Fridge Police! I am afraid I am having to be very sneaky! My fear is not just Dad (who has mixed dementia) but also mom who is incredibly frail, eats poorly, dehydrated - for whom dad has been preparing meals.
They both had campylobacter, as did my son and his girlfriend, as a result of eating chicken liver pâté at a pub restaurant just over two years ago, I don't ever want a repeat of that month thank you! I can tell you that this particular bug responds to antibiotics if started early, so if you ever suspect food poisoning relating to chicken or turkey then flag up to the GP ASAP, my son recovered quite quickly because he was the last to develop symptoms so I had a pretty good idea what caused it and got him to the GP within a couple of hours of symptoms starting. Dad lost a stone in weight, mom and dad were incontinent for weeks. Campylobacter causes raging diarrhoea, it can also develop up to a week after you've eaten an infected item so often people don't realise what the actual cause was, thinking it must be something they ate in last day or so. Sorry if I sound alarmist here, let's just say I treat chicken now as a highly risky thing, by the way, I'm a vegetarian of over twenty years standing, if I hadn't been already I think that incident would have turned me off meat anyway!
Dad is very aware that I throw food away, he is onto me like a hawk if I go near the fridge, we have sometimes taken advantage of a paramedic attending to one of moms many falls to send someone into the kitchen for a clear out while his attention is elsewhere. Back in September this unearthed the presence of over fifty eggs, his weekly sausage purchases from the butchers which are unlabelled were five in total so that means some was five weeks old, some four etc and no way of knowing which? I've since had a chat with the butcher and asked he marks dad's purchases with the date of sale with black marker so we can keep a check.
Dad was incensed I'd thrown away some runner beans he had prepared. They were brown and slimy so I put them in the wheely bin along with some frozen beef kidney that was iced up and almost a year old. I was horrified to find them in the freezer a few days later, retrieved from the wheely bin! I now throw it all in a plastic bag and drop it over their gate and then retrieve it as I go to my car and take it home to my own bin.
Social services have put in place a tea time call starting this week as mom is eating so poorly, mom and dad pay for lunchtime carer and she will do a sandwich. Carers have been alerted to the fridge situation and I've given the evening carer my mobile and told her to text me so I can replace anything she throws out. If I spot something about to go out of date, and I am talking use by dates, not best before here, then I try to buy said item and then swap them with the replacement so dad doesn't notice the item expiring on say 23 January now says 6 February! I'm off to get replacement yoghurts today as a pack of eight are about to expire.
I'm trying to reduce the high risk foods best I can, such as raw chicken, as dad wouldn't handle it properly and would probably thaw it in a nice warm spot or store it unwrapped in the fridge. I will say 'oh the chicken was on buy one get one half price, so I bought two and cooked them both, here's a cooked chicken for you'. I do then have to watch it's eaten in a couple of days and not left out in the kitchen. Canned stuff is obviously pretty good as you can safely eat it cold from the can, though you do have to watch for half eaten cans mouldering in the fridge!
I take dad shopping so have some control, but his local shop and butcher will deliver an order to him if he phones, so I can't completely monitor what food is in the house. I have also been dealing with the build up of stuff from when dad could drive prior to November. I've been cooking meals like stew and freezing in portions, when I take some over I remove some ancient icy package in the freezer and that way he doesn't notice the freezer emptying.
So this is just another reason why I'm awake reading and posting at silly o clock in the morning!