Hello
@BAE
Im glad to hear that your husband is improving, but you have posted on the End of Life forum (possibly by mistake?), so I wanted to explain what happens when someone dies from dementia.
People with dementia can die from other reasons - a heart attack, or stroke for example and when that happens it can be quite quick, but when someone dies from dementia it happens slowly. The body closes down over days, weeks, or even months and, as part of this process, they stop eating and drinking and the swallow goes completely. They do not die because they are not eating and drinking - they stop eating and drinking because they are already dying.
When my mum reached End of Life she went 17 days with no food or fluid, but she was not starving to death. Her body was shutting down and no longer needed food or fluid. I expect that if I had insisted she may have been given a NG tube and it may have meant that she lived a n extra few weeks, or even a couple of months longer, but just because you
can do something it doesnt necessarily mean that you should (Im talking about a NG tub at End of Life here - not for other reasons). You can still get aspiration pneumonia even with an NG tube, mum would have found the whole thing very traumatic and ultimately I would have had to ask myself - Am I preserving life, or merely prolonging death?