This is my story about Jessica Rothman

It's just me and Mom now. She’s 81, and I love her dearly. But her mental and physical health began declining after my father passed away. So much so that she forgot to pay her bills, and the bank foreclosed on her condo. I moved her in with me, so that as her daughter, I would take care of us both. Nearly five years later, my freelancing income and her social security isn't enough to pay the ever-increasing bills, and we're down to the wire.

Recently, I've been building an online store selling digital artwork to try and make us an income but haven't been able to make more than a little bit here and there. It will take time to build up enough to be workable. I've also been trying to get Mom into Medicare and other programs as her representative, but she's been turned down. We're using the last of our savings to pay our bills this month. I'm terrified of the idea of being foreclosed on, and not having anywhere to go from here.

Some days I want to hide away just for a little while, but that's not an option anymore. Mom's declining health has also affected her ability to retain new memories, so I have to keep tabs on her as much as possible. One morning I woke up and discovered that she’d wandered out of the apartment entirely! Running around outside, still in my night clothes, I found her five minutes later sitting to the side of the car entrance to our complex, waiting for someone to come and find her. I bought a door alarm which will go off when the door is opened at night to wake me up… Thankfully she hasn't wandered again, but that had scared the LIFE out of me.

With my having to watch her, it's difficult to even try to work online. She gets antsy, confused, or upset when she and I aren't sitting next to each other doing things together, even though my computer is 15 feet away from her with a direct line of sight.

Sometimes I can get her to read, but I don't see her turning pages often because of her memory retention. It's truly painful because she was a devastatingly intelligent woman who usually won our family participation watching Jeopardy on TV. She was a teacher when she was young and living in Brooklyn, NY, and her students loved her...

Thank God she still remembers me... I hope that stays the case.

At night, after she goes to bed, I've been working on various ways that I might be able to earn a little extra income. So far it has met with only mild success.

But times are getting desperate now. We're running low on our savings, and between food prices and the ever-increasing bill for Public Storage so that we can keep her furniture and other things (up another $100 this month), paying our bills will soon be impossible.

I have a GoFundMe fundraiser here: https://gofund.me/dd5a795d

Thank you for reading this. The possibility of getting help gives me a sense of hope. It has been difficult to write this, but I think that sharing this with you helped me too.

Really- thank you.