Hi, I'm Leon and I hate that this is what it's come to. I never thought that I'd be writing these words, leaning on anyone - asking for help, has never been something I've been comfortable with, so please bare with me.

My Mom (Delores, 56) suffered some of the worst headaches of her life in September 2024, and visited her GP twice, only to be sent home with paracetamol. 12 days later I got the phone call while I was at work - she'd been found collapsed outside the school of her grandchildren that she'd gone to collect. That was the last day I'd ever speak to the woman that was my Mom.

What followed was 6 months of agonising hospitalisation. She'd suffered a brain bleed and was taken to the Queen Elizabeth hospital in the next city over (Birmingham) for 9 hours of brain surgery. Part of her skull was removed, and they attempted to clamp the bleeding. During the operation the left-side of her brain suffered irreparable damage, due to multiple aneurysms bursting, which would forever affect her ability to talk, make logical choices, problem solve, think ahead - everything that made her who she was. My sister and I had juggle 2 trains and 2 buses each way to visit my mother in hopsital every day, along with the childcare for her 3 young children, and this was NOT a cheap endeavour.

6 months after my Mom's initial brain bleed, she was discharged from hospital as she was finally in a stable enough condition to come home.

During her attempt at rehabilitation, in the months that followed, I used all our savings and maxed out a credit card making adjustments to the home she's live in for 35 years, to allow for the equipment we need for me to care for her on a day to day basis.

We cannot afford carers to assist her now she cannot move, or walk, or talk, so I am now an unpaid carer taking care of her every need 24 hours a day 7 days a week - whilst attempting to work a part time job from my bedroom 3 days a week to be able to pay the bills, as the little benefits she gets just isn't enough for us.

She is such a prideful woman, and it's a trait I inherited too, but we're at the point where I'm drowning, and need a way to just hit the reset button to bring us out of the financial blackhole that this subarachnoid haemorrhage has put us in, so I can just maintain us from payslip to payslip until something changes or improves. The physiotherapy team who attended for a few months after she was discharged have told us she'll never move the right side of her body again. She'll never form a complete sentence again to tell me how she feels or what she's thinking. Each and every day I have to find the strength to get myself and her through it, but in the back of my mind, this £4000+ debt stabs at me constantly, draining what little spirit I have left.

ANY help anyone is able to spare (I still hate saying that) would be WILDLY appreciated. I truly have nobody to ask besides complete strangers on the internet. My life has truly become something I could never have forseen.