My mom had a stroke, I'm trying to get my life more in order so I can take care of her, and get her more on the road to (hopeful) recovery.

My mom had a stroke in October 2023, and I spent a lot of time and resources going from NC to MD to get help her get her affairs mostly in order, and to bring her from Maryland, to where I am in North Carolina. She seemed to not have many ill effects from the stroke, but I brought her to NC, and we lived in my duplex, her on one side, me and my wife on the other. Over the next few months we got her in good shape and recovered, but at the of December 2023, She had another stroke. The doctors had to do a few surgeries in early 2024, and got her on medicine to prevent further strokes. By summer of 2024 she had gotten the watchman (a heart surgery to prevent strokes), and things were improving, and we went on with trying to recover (physically, emotionally, financially. etc.) from that experience, thinking that was behind us. On Dec 16th 2024, however, she had her 3rd and much, much worse stroke. This one came out of nowhere. That day she pulled herself (literally crawled), half paralyzed out the front door of her side of the duplex, across the concrete front porch to my side of the duplex, tearing up her hands and feet as she drug herself over. She was covered in many bodily fluids.

Luckily three things went right:

Thing #1 is that my wife was home because she had swapped work shifts with someone (otherwise she would have been at work). Thing #2 is I had ordered a car part and decided to have it shipped instead of me driving to go pick it up (so I was actually at home, too).

And Thing #3 One of our cats freaked out, alerting my wife that something was happening outside, who went to go see what was happening, saw my mom and came and got me. I proceeded to grab my mom, get her into the Van and took her straight to the Emergency room.

A bit about me, I have a bad back, degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, and arthritis and mostly shot knees from injuries of my past. So I am unable to work in the traditional sense. I do what I can to generate income. I fix cars, fix or build computers, and I build awesome yurts. I was also working on trying to get a nice CNC machine shop set up so I could help other people make cool things. To be honest I was expecting to be the one in a wheelchair, not her.

When the pandemic came back in 2020, that crushed most of the income I was able to generate, and depleted a large majority of the resources I had. I was still able to make some stuff, but with the pandemic making people not go anywhere, cars needed less fixing, no one needed computer work, and the events for the yurts were cancelled except for some in 2021, where the inflation costs made the yurts I did make extremely expensive to make, and so the profit margin was nearly non-existent.

I've been trying to keep everything together, but in the last 5 months I lost two truly amazing cats, (20yrs old and 18 yrs old, respectively). These cats were once in a lifetime animals, truly next level smart, and were effectively therapy cats. At the end of August/September, I also lost one of my closest friends, Scott, of over 20 years. (who was a great guy, beloved by many in his own right, kind, caring and an awesome handyman (and he used to hang out here talking about crazy stuff to make on a near daily basis for years). I was still reeling from the loss of all that when my mom had her stroke.

I am trapped between grieving and keeping everything currently together. It is much more physically, emotionally, mentally, and financially draining than I could have ever imagined. I know I need to reshape many aspects of my life, and with my mom having limited mobility, I need to modify my house (duplex) to make it more fitting, handicap accessible, and functional for taking care of a recovering stroke patient that is partially paralyzed. Normally Scott and I together would be able to tackle the home improvement projects, or oddly enough, my mom would have normally been great at that as well (she literally built her own 3 story house, almost completely by herself 40 years ago).

I basically need to figure out how to take care of my mom (whom I love very much), and recover from the chaos of the past, that all stacked up upon itself. I am so mentally tapped out, sometimes it is a major struggle just to get up and remember what’s going on in the next 15 minutes.

I will figure out how to go forward, somehow, I will be supportive to the best of my ability, and do what I can to help her recover. She is an extremely determined and driven woman (again, she literally built her own house). So I am fighting with everything I can to make sure she has the best possible chance at pulling through. If you’re to help support in any way, it would be greatly appreciated.

Lastly financials: For inpatient care as far as I know almost all these are largely covered by her insurance. What isn’t covered are the expenses for the stuff that has happened in the past when we were with her in the ICU for (two weeks I think?), plus traveling to and from the Rehabilitation facility (which is further away, not a terrible drive, but still more), home modifications, our expenses, fuel, groceries, household upkeep, etc. I don't even know what future medications/therapy not directly or indirectly covered by her insurance are, or will be yet at this point, as we are taking it day by day. She is still improving a little each day, but as the people I have talked to, who have gone through this say it takes a lot of time, and a lot of resources, and my resources got spread thin or mostly used up long ago.