In this candid vlog, the speaker recounts the overwhelming experience of caring for her 81‑year‑old mother. She describes cleaning out her mother's cluttered apartment, confronting hoarding habits, and dealing with the physical hazards of excess belongings. The narrative moves to medication management, detailing the mother's long‑term reliance on narcotics for hip pain, the speaker’s effort to wean her off opioids, and the transition to THC and Delta‑8 as alternative pain relief. The mother’s recent hospital stay, infection, and rehab placement are discussed, along with the speaker’s frustration over limited pain control in the facility. Family dynamics surface as the speaker coordinates with her brother, sister, and husband, highlighting the financial strain of assisted‑living costs, out‑of‑pocket expenses, and budgeting challenges. The speaker expresses the emotional toll of the “sandwich generation,” feeling trapped between caring for aging parents and raising her own family, while pleading for prayers and help finding weekday in‑home support. The vlog ends with a weary but hopeful invitation for others in similar situations to share their experiences.
Chapters
[SIGH] I've just been cleaning out my mother's apartment. She really knows how to hide a lot of trash, and you don't really know it's there until you have to clean it up. Having an older parent who didn't prepare to be older is difficult. My 19-year-old son and I will be coming back here tomorrow to clean up. And right now I'm looking at— she has a roll-top desk that I haven't looked in. I'm gonna do that now. I'm a little bit afraid. I want to take some people with me here. This is her little setup. Everything looks nice up top. We'll see. Oh yeah, crazy mess in there. Just a bunch of stuff that she doesn't need. to be keeping. Oh, there's an empty drawer. Wow. Yeah, I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. Why are you keeping all this stuff you don't need? It's just taking up room. Look at all the boxes I found that just need to be broken down and take out— taken out to, to, uh, recycle. I've been working in her room. She has many, many shoes that she— you only need some. I don't know, she's 81. Why do you need these and these and these? And then there's this bag of kitten heels and stuff. I'm like, no, no, Mom, no. Anyway, this is my life right now, getting things prepared for my mom. She just cursed me out. She's at rehab and I— the doctors had her on narcotics for a long time. She had hip surgery many, many years ago. Many years ago. She should not still need to be on narcotics for her hip pain, yet she was, and nobody seemed to be too concerned about getting her off of these narcotics. And honestly, at that point, she was like late 70s, and I don't know how to turn on this light, and she— Sorry, I'm trying to figure out the lights in here. I know that— oh, it's behind here, I bet. Oh, there we go. Anyways, she was on narcotics and was in her late 70s at this time, living in an assisted living facility, but she didn't need all the assisted living things that they did, I guess. Like, they— she had breakfast, lunch, and dinner and a little small kitchenette and she couldn't afford it, so we had to pay out of pocket for it. But I wanted to take care of her, but I couldn't have her in my house anymore because seriously, I was going to kill her. I love my mother until I have to deal with my mother. That's just the way it is right now for me, and it's difficult. Anyways, she's on all these narcotics, and I would refill her prescriptions for her, take her her prescriptions. And she took them herself, you know, and we thought everything was going fine with that until she called me halfway through the month to tell me she was out, and I was like, "Ooh, that's not good, Mom. You're only supposed to take— these are supposed to last you for 30 days, and I cannot refill them sooner than every 30 days." And so of course she started yelling and screaming at me and gets mad at me, and I was like, "Mom, you're like ODing on these drugs." You're going to kill yourself. It was then like she went through this detox because she had to. It was not fun. But once she went through that, I was like, I'm not getting you that anymore. No. Number one, I'm taking over control of your medication for you. I, you know, this is— And she keeps all the stinking bags that I put her medications in. I'm like, "Just chuck them out, Mom." It's because of when, the era she was raised in and whatnot, but still, it's a little bit like— she's got— she had— I just cleaned out a drawer full of empty snack bags that I had put her medications in for her. Obviously, I need to be coming to her apartment more often, and I think my brother and I need to figure out how to get somebody to come in here more often for her just to check on her, make sure she's taking her medications, which she has been pretty good about it since I've been doing this. She's been good at taking them, just not very good at throwing out the bags when she was done. Why are you keeping this stuff? I don't get it. I know, breathe, breathe. So like right now, the reason I'm sitting down is because I'm having a low blood sugar, so I'm going to get this cookie out that I found and eat it and get my blood sugar up, and then it'll go too high and I'll just go on the blood sugar roller coaster for about an hour or two. But this is what she has in here, is these cookies. I will eat a cookie. I get her off the narcotics and I start getting her— we'd gone to Colorado and I had some THC. So I started giving her that, and then we went on another trip— or no, I went across into Iowa and I was able to get some THC over there. And then this whole Delta-8 thing started, and they are letting these vendors, stores, whatever, sell the Delta-8 here in Nebraska. Thank God. Because we were looking at making another trip to Colorado and it's, it's kind of costly to do that stuff. But I got her off the narcotics and I give her the Delta-8 for her pain. I'm not sure how much pain she's in. She says she's in pain all the time. And the Delta-8 does help her with her pain. So that's good. But now she's in rehab. She was in the hospital for 3 days with an infection, which was really scary. I thought she was leaving us, but that— now she's come back. She's— my mom tends to get close to death and then bounce back. She's 81 years old now, and she is in the hospital for 3 days. Then they put her in rehab. So she's been there for a week. Mm-hmm. In a few days. I believe she gets out this Friday. I don't know for sure. I know on Thursday I have to go have a meeting with the people there. Right now it's, okay, let's clean out this apartment and get it set up nicely so that my mom has a nice peaceful place and doesn't trip over shit and fall and hurt herself and end up back in the hospital. And you know, that's why I'm here cleaning, is to make sure everything is set up nicely for her, and she calls me while I was cleaning, so I didn't answer. I'm like, "I'm sorry, I'm busy. I'm trying to stay on track. I'm trying to get this stuff done." And I start having this low blood sugar, and I think, "Okay, I'm going to call her back and see what's going on," because her message was, "I really need to talk to you. We need to go for a walk down a hallway and just have a talk." I don't know, whatever, call her. And she starts telling me about all the pain she's in and that I said, well, aren't they giving you something? Yes, aspirin. And I said, well, they're actually giving you Tylenol, Mom, and they're giving you maximum dose every 4 hours or whatever it is. Okay. Like giving maximum dose, giving her Tylenol. And I, I don't want her going on narcotics right now. However, She's in a facility where I cannot take Delta-8, and I'm sorry, I don't want to be arrested. I'm sorry, I don't want to get in that kind of trouble. I— she told me to fuck off because I told her they were giving her Tylenol, and I was trying to explain to her that they're trying to get her in good enough physical shape that she can come back home, and she just told me to fuck off and hung up on me. I don't know. Called my brother, or well, texted my brother and my sister and said, can somebody please call her? Like, she's being a pain in my butt, which when she's a royal pain in my ass like that, and I'm sorry, I'm swearing. Keep your kids away from this video if you're watching it with them. She's being a pain in my ass, which is a pain in my ass. However, that means she's getting better. I don't know. Oxymoron. That's what that is. I'm the oxy and she's the moron? I don't know. I just know I've heard of oxymoron many years ago in school. And this is me caring for my mom, figuring this life out. And please pray for me, pray for my mom, pray for my brother, pray for my sister. Pray that we can find somebody who can come check in on my mother during the week. So that I only have to come on the weekends, because I can't keep living like this. I can't. We're keeping her in the lifestyle that she— well, actually, in a lifestyle that's better than what she planned for herself after retirement and getting old, because she didn't plan anything! Sorry, I'm frustrated by that too. My husband and I are trying to make sure that we have ourselves taken care of when we're older, and she did no such thing. A big part of it is because back in the day they didn't really know any better. They thought that if they worked for a company for long enough that they would support them through their retirement, and that's kind of disappeared. They thought— I don't even know, I don't even think my mom or her husband had 401(k) 401(k) or anything. They just lived on Social Security, and she still does, with my husband and I and my son looking after her. We do her grocery shopping, my husband manages her finances, and we try and make sure we stay within her budget. Sometimes we go a little bit over and that comes out of our money. But yeah, it's just— I don't like this balancing act. I don't like being part of the sandwich generation either. It is not very fun. And basically the sandwich generation is a lot of Gen Xers, and I'm like the tail end of baby boomer. I'm kind of in the Gen X generation. I am not sure, but it's— a lot of us are going through this right now with older parents and still having our own family to take care of, still wanting to live our own lives, wanting to grow a business, wanting to— oh my goodness. But she expects me to look after her and look after her alone, and I don't like it. Yeah, that's just me complaining. Sorry. I hope y'all have a great day. Hope you don't have to deal with elderly parents. Bye. If you do, let me know. Let's talk about it. It's a mess. Bye. Bye.
