I have never tried it myself but I found a few things online about its taste. Hope it helps. The first one described the fruit as "ovoid orange-red berry with floury, yellow, edible but insipid pulp". Dr. Chiranjit Parmar said of the fruit: "It is a small to large evergreen tree growing in warmer parts of India. It is a relative of sapota. We call it Maulsiri in Hindi. The old Sanskrit name is Bakul. It is planted in gardens and along the roads and is valued for its fragrant flowers which are used for making garlands. The flowers retain their fragrance for quite long even after drying. So these are also sometimes use for stuffing pillows. Fruits are edible and also used for preserves and pickles. The kernels yield a fatty oil which was once used for lighting and cooking. Flowers are used for the preparation of an Otto used in perfumes. The leaves are used as fodder. Bark and fruits are used in diarrhea and dysentery. Dried flowers are used as snuff and pounded seed used in suppositories for constipation. The wood is hard and used for so many purposes." Oscar from www.fruitlovers.com said: "saw an Elengi about 10 years ago at the Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden on Oahu. The tree was only about 8 feet tall then and had a lot of fruits on it. The fruits were seedy and tasted similar to eggfruit-canistel (Elengi is in Sapotaceae family), but not as good as eggfruit in my opinion. Fruit was a lot smaller than an eggfruit. Here is what Marie Neal says about it in her book In Gardens of Hawaii, p. 671: Elengi, Pogada. Mimusops elengi. A rather large evrgreen tree with inconspicuous milky sap and with young growth, flower stems, and calyx rusty-downy, has smooth, dark green, oval wavy-edged, short- pointed leaves, 2 to 6 inches long, their stems .75 inch long. The tree is a native of Malaya and Malaysia. Two to six flowers,clustered at leaf axils are white, fragrant, about .5 inch in diameter, on stems about .5 inch long, the calyx eight-parted, the corolla also eight parted and each petal two-lobed, the whole corolla falling off as a star lobed ring. The eight stames alternate with eight petal-like sterile stamens. The fruit is ovoid, about an inch long, green to orange, and has one dark seed within the yellow pulp, which is too astringent to eat. Where native, all parts of the tree are used: leaves, bark, flowers, fruits, and roots for mecicine, floweres for perfume, the hard reddish wood for boats, cabinet work, canes and other purposes. A variety with shorter, narrower leaves (var. parvifolia) is a handsome, medium-sized tree, which though a native of rain forests in Malaysia and Melanesia, also may endure low and dry areas. A species with larger leaves and larger yellow, glovose fruit with milder pulp (M. commersonii) has also been introduced to Hawaii. A South African wind-resistant tree (M. caffra) has small leaves, widest near the tip, 2.5 by .7 inches, the petiole aobut half an inch long. Many flowers develop near branch ends; fuits are scarlet, 1 inch long, one seeded. After reading Neal's description it seems that perhaps what i saw was M. commersonii and not M. elengi. I dont remember the fruit being astringent, and it had several seeds inside. But my memory could be wrong."

Elle, stool softeners didn't help my mother much, either. I did give her cooked prunes with her breakfast. (I pureed them which might make them easier to be digested...) When I brought her home from the hospital, her dentures wouldn't stay in her mouth for a couple of months. I pureed a lot and even tried some baby food fruit. (yuck!!) BUT I found that baby food PLUMS (also has some pears and apples in if I remember correctly) helped her... Does she drink enough water? It's hard to get them to drink it, but so necessary and the best of liquids. I would make Mom soup with chicken and vegetables, strain it and give her the broth to drink. The chicken and vegetables could be prepared for a meal... Dulcolax suppositories were the ONLY ones that would work with my parents. Fleet enemas WITH mineral oil are easier on the body. I found whether my parents ate little or much, their bowels were STILL processing waste and needed to eliminate regularly. Dad had to take milk of magnesia DAILY. I kept a chart and monitored how much I gave him and how it affected him the next day. Sometimes 1T wasn't enough, and I'd give him 2T that day. If that made him too loose, I'd cut it back to 1 1/2T. At times I needed to give him 2 1/2T. He was good about taking it. Mom didn't like it, but would take it in desperate situations! :) It's tricky to get the right amt. Sometimes I had to go to 3 or 4T with them... I came upon Little Tummys' Laxative Drops for babies and would give that to Mother. That helped her BUT tasted terrible. I would put it in teaspoon of baked apples. When Mother started in Hospice, they gave her a stool softener that worked better than anything I had been able to purchase OTC. All I can remember is that they had SENNA in them which is also in the Little Tummys laxative drops. There may be something OTC available today in capsule form with SENNA for the bowels. Check with her dr. or pharmacist. I pray you can get a handle on this for her. It was a HUGE problem for my parents. (Mom was an invalid; Dad had pancreatic cancer...) Is she able to do some walking??? May God give you and her strength and wisdom. ~breezy

I'm so sorry. Give that baby all the love & warmth in your heart. I sort of know what you mean about grieving for him even as you look at his little face; when my Aunt Lillie was in the hospital at the end of her life, I knew she was gone from me, even though she was still "there". It must be much more intense when it's a little baby. You might post on the Caregivers Forum; it's for people who are caring for chronically or terminally ill or disabled loved ones, & there are a lot of warm, caring people over there who can help you with your day-to-day life as well as the "big picture" issues. sending you & the baby thoughts for strength, love, protection, & peace.

A doctor told my husband how to prevent hemorrhoids, he ignored the information and eventually had to have surgery. I have a slight problem,and used the instructions the doctor game my husband: Use a box of 12 suppositories following the directions on the box. After they have shrunk a bit I take these precautions. Do not wipe with a lot of pressure because it pulls the muscles out. Clean yourself carefully then follow up with a wet wipe. I buy unscented toddler type wipes because of their thickness and size and dispose of it in the plastic bag the newspaper comes in. He also suggested using Vaseline when you notice a problem. Mine have not been bad enough to use a pillow, prevention is the best thing. While you are trying to get rid of the problem take warm baths, soaking until the water cools helps a lot.