How the Vincere Weighted Utensils Made a Hard Part of the Day Easier

The hardest part of dinner used to be the last ten minutes. Walt, my husband of 43 years, is 71 and retired from the machine shop. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's seven years ago. The tremor in his right hand is worse when he is tired, and by evening it is tired. He would get most of a bowl of soup to his mouth, then the spoon would tip, and the last third would go back in the bowl or on the placemat. About 14 months ago, I bought a four-piece set of Vincere Silverware: a table knife, a fork, a tablespoon and a deep bowl soup spoon. It did not fix dinner. It made dinner less of a fight.

Before that, I tried the thick foam sleeves and the bendable spoons from the drugstore. Walt hated them. They looked like hospital gear, he said, and he did not want the grandchildren to see him eating with something that looked like a toy. So he started skipping soup. Then he started finding reasons not to sit at the table with the family at Thanksgiving. He said he was not hungry. He was embarrassed. I knew it, and I did not know what to do about it that would not make him more embarrassed.

The Vincere Silverware set looks like ordinary flatware. That mattered more than I expected. It is stainless steel, polished, and it goes in the dishwasher with the rest of the dishes. The handles are larger than our old forks and spoons, with a wide weighted nonslip grip. The set weighs 1.8 pounds, so each piece has a heft that you notice the first time you pick it up. Walt noticed. He grumbled for about a week. Then he stopped grumbling and started using the soup spoon.

I want to be plain about what these do. They do not stop the tremor. They do not treat Parkinson's. On a bad day, Walt still spills. The difference is how often the spoon arrives at his mouth with food on it. The weight and the bigger handle give his hand more to hold onto, and the deep bowl holds soup that a regular spoon loses. That is the whole thing. It is a small mechanical change, not a medical one. If you are changing anything about how someone with Parkinson's eats or moves, run it past the neurologist or physical therapist first.

The travel bag is the other part I did not expect to use. It is a roll-up holder, and I keep it in my purse. On Sundays we go to the diner, and I hand Walt his own spoon instead of watching him saw at a bowl with a thin diner spoon. It is a small dignity, but it is dignity.

The tremor did not go away. The spoon just stopped arriving at his mouth empty so often.

At the next family dinner, Walt sat at the table for the whole meal. He did not finish every bowl clean, and he did not want to be watched. But he ate soup with the rest of us, and when our daughter asked how he was doing, he said, Fine, which is Walt's version of a speech. The Vincere Silverware set was not the reason he stayed at the table. It was one less reason to leave.

We have used the set at every meal for 14 months. The soup spoon gets the most work. The fork is second, mostly for softer food. The knife is the piece Walt uses least, because cutting is still hard for him, but when he does use it, the larger handle gives him a better grip than our old table knife. The tablespoon is the one I use when I dish out his portions. Nothing has bent, chipped or gone missing. I run it through the dishwasher and put it back in the drawer.

He still uses a regular fork on good days. He is not a child, and I am not going to make a production of setting out special gear at every meal. The point is that the Vincere Silverware sits in the drawer. It does not announce itself. If he wants it, it is there. If he does not, nobody makes a thing of it.

We also take it to the diner and to our son's house when we visit. The roll-up bag keeps the pieces together in my purse, which sounds like a small thing until you have dug through a purse for a spoon while your husband waits at a restaurant table. It is not a big story. It is a better Sunday.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Start with one meal and one utensil. Do not buy a drawer full of adaptive gear before you know what the person will actually use. For Walt, it was the soup spoon. For someone else, it might be the fork or the knife. Put the utensil where he can reach it without asking, and do not stand over him while he uses it. The first week may involve grumbling. Walt grumbled for a week, and then he ate his soup.

Ask the physical therapist what they think before you spend money. Ours was the one who first suggested adaptive gear, and she was right about the rollator and the bed rail too. But she also told us that gear is not a cure and not a substitute for the exercises. The Vincere Silverware does not replace anything the neurologist or PT does. It just makes the table a little easier on a tired hand.

If you are the one doing the caregiving, you are allowed to be tired of the mess. I was. I am. The difference is that now I can wipe up a little soup and sit back down, instead of watching Walt give up on a meal. That is worth more to me than a clean placemat.