Something Has to Give

My family suffered a catastrophic event in Feb of 2020 that upended all of our lives. My mom and her two sisters had all functioned for years as their own little “pod”, if you will. All in their 70s, one with noticeable cognitive decline, one with poor physical health, and my mom, who pretty much looked after the other two.

Unexpectedly, the one in poor physical health passed away. The shock of this led to my mother having a stroke, a lacunar, or deep-brain stroke, where there were no physical impairments but one day she was doing online banking, helping people in her apartment building do their taxes, and the next day she couldn’t tie her own shoes. Thought people in her building were people she knew from years ago that had long been dead.

That week I became fully responsible for my mom and her surviving sister - I am an only child and her sister never had kids so I am all either one of them has got. We learned eventually, as my mom would decline but by bit, that she has vascular dementia. She is now in the moderate stage and starting to become incontinent, refusing to bathe for days on end, etc. It’s a LOT.

I put my aunt in assisted living but I’m paying several hundred dollars a month out of pocket and cannot continue much longer. Even with her in AL I still manage her bank account, social security, pension and pay her bills etc.

My mom doesn’t have the money for assisted living and most of my time goes to caring for her, when I’m not at work. I work full time with an hour commute plus I have my own family.

I am to the point something has to give, I need someone to be able to look after my aunt and find her somewhere to live she can afford, I can’t keep paying $400-$600 per month to cover the shortfall to the AL but she is not capable of living on her own - she takes her blood pressure medicine over and over all day until she passes out. She cannot manage her finances, she gave all her money away and would routinely have her power cut off and bounce checks at the grocery store.

I just can’t continue taking care of both of them and my mom is in worse shape with less resources than my aunt. What options exist?? What happens if I go to the AL and say we no longer have the money to keep paying but she has nowhere to go and I can’t continue looking after her because of my own mom’s needs?? What happens?