Hey. So, it's been a while since I've written anything here, and a long while since I've done a true 'life update' kind of journal. Honestly, I'm not sure if this is the right moment... but it's the moment I was motivated to do it, so that's gonna have to do.

It's been a rough road the past few years. My mom has been suffering from an apparent neurological condition that we haven't been able to nail down to a diagnosis. Over a period of years, her ability to express herself verbally has been eroding, to the point where getting a simple sentence out can take several minutes. She's also experienced a recurring lack of balance, which has made her susceptible to taking falls with no dizziness or other warning signs beforehand. It got so bad that we actually had to move because of it, out of the condo that we called home for 25 years, and at which we would have been very happy to stay-- if only it hadn't been on the third floor of a building with no elevator.

We moved into our new apartment on the first day of February 2025. On the last day of that month, my father passed away. To say that all of this upheaval happening around the same time was overwhelming would be an understatement-- truth be told, I don't know how I got through it all.

Since moving into the new place, my mom's deterioration has seemed to accelerate. Being her caregiver has become a 24/7 job from which I rarely get a break. There have been days that lasted weeks-- days that forced me to dig down and access a level of fortitude that I'm not sure I knew I possessed. And there have been failures that made me feel unfit to be looking after her. Times when I wished that my brother and I could somehow be magically combined into one being that had my availability and logic, and his patience and gentler demeanor.


This past Sunday, I left the apartment for 45 minutes to get some groceries, and came back to find my mom half-dressed and disoriented. It kind of felt like she wasn't 'with me', which is unusual for her. I called my aunt (who, like my mother, has a medical background), and we decided to take her to the ER. She tested positive for COVID, which was completely unexpected, as there had been little to no obvious outward signs of this or anything similar. She stayed in the hospital for two days and came home on Tuesday.

I want to say this cautiously: there are signs that suggest that my mom's long-time, overall condition may be improving. Since Monday, she has had an increased ability to communicate-- longer sentences, taking less time to finish them, finding specifically-chosen words that would have escaped her before. There also seems to be some improvement as far as mobility is concerned.

The frustrating part is that at this time, we're not certain exactly what has led to this, which means that we're not sure if it's something that we're going to be able to replicate and continue. I haven't had a chance yet to go over any of this with her neurologist (whose office seems to have closed early for the holidays), but I'm hoping that in 2026, it will give us several avenues of treatment to explore. The important part is that these developments seem to suggest that all the circuits are still there in my mom's brain-- it's just that the signals have been getting blocked. And that in itself wasn't something that I was 100% sure about at the beginning of this week.

For the last several years, hope has almost felt like a dangerous thing to have... but it's gotten me this far. Maybe, just maybe it hasn't all been in vain.

I hope you all have peaceful, happy holidays.