My (34) mother (73) raised me alone, an only child. My childhood was not great, but we held each other up, and I swore to her that I would take care of her forever. Our plan was to move in together and live happily until her peaceful death. The idealism of such a plan is, in hindsight, probably why this is so hard.

My mom moved in with me 8 years ago before I had my oldest, with the intention of fulfilling that long-ago promise. Over the years, she has struggled with alcoholism (giving me uncomfortable callbacks to my childhood) and depression, which has gotten worse and worse with time. She has been showing signs of cognitive impairment and memory loss for the past few years, but it has recently rapidly and severely progressed, to the point that she is no longer able to take care of herself. Last month, she was sent to the ER by her PCP for signs of a heart attack and she was hospitalized for 3 days with a diagnosis of congestive heart failure. She's had hypertension for years, but the heart condition is sudden. I suspect it's been ongoing for some time, but her previous PCP was not very focused on her individual wellbeing.

After her hospitalization (and I think partly due to the trauma of it), she has been completely unable to hold a conversation. She's been wandering around the house looking lost and in the few lucid moments she's had, she's been immensely depressed. I haven't known what to do with the situation, but I knew something drastic had to happen. I started asking advice from medical professionals, cops, my therapist, friends--hell, even financial advisors--and the solution was not forthcoming. Something had to give, though. I didn't feel she was safe at home alone, and I couldn't leave her alone with my kids.

The solution has presented itself as of last week. On Friday, I told her that I couldn't take care of her anymore and that we needed to find a solution for her moving out and into some kind of social care. It put her into a shock, and over the course of the day she began showing signs of some kind of medical emergency. She was shaking (not trembling, but full shaking), breaking out into a cold sweat, and couldn't talk except to ask what I wanted her to do, over and over again. I have a friend who works in a memory care and residential nursing home, and I asked her to come over and check my mom out.

She said it looked like my mom was going through withdrawals. I had found out the day before that she was not keeping up with her medications' instruction paper, so this was a real possibility--which meant she might be in danger of heart attack. So, to the hospital we went.

Just after midnight, she was admitted after I desperately begged the ER's attending nurse to find a way to help my situation. She is still in the hospital, and now they are running a multitude of tests to look for signs of dementia (she's never been diagnosed, which is the surest sign of her PCP's medical neglect), but also any excuse to put her into a skilled care facility/rehab. The hospital put me in touch with a case worker who advised me to put her in the care of one of these facilities and let them transfer her into their long term care on medicaid. So a path forward is visible.

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...this is where it gets complicated for my handling of the situation. As I said in the beginning of this absurdly long post, I promised her I would always take care of her and never put her into a home. But here we are. And now I'm looking down the barrel of a lingering death from dementia, which is not an end that I ever anticipated for her. My own mortality is very real, as now I'm worried about a genetic predisposition for such things.

So now I'm having a real breakdown. I'm not handling shit well. I've only been able to bring myself to visit my mom once, and in talking to her, she had forgotten the last three years of our time together. The last 10 years were a muddled mess in her recollection. She's forgotten how to read and use the TV remote. This is a massive difference from just two months ago, and it's devastating. The thought of putting my kids through this is sickening. I would rather die. And that's terrifying to me, because I've struggled my whole life with depression and I do have a history of suicidal ideation (though I'm not there at this time, nor do I have any plans or intent to harm myself).

I'm able to rationalize my feelings and tell myself not to feel guilty; that I'm doing the right thing by her and by my family...but I'm having trouble convincing myself of this. It's...so hard...and I don't have my mother to turn to.

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I don't really know why I wrote all of this. I've talked to my friends about the situation, but I can't see my therapist until Wednesday. I'm taking a leave from work because I've been in a dissociative state for much of the last 5 days, either weeping or constantly on the verge of tears. And I just...needed to get all this off my chest.

Thanks for listening.