Hey guys. I don't really even know how to
begin a video like this. I don't know how to make a video like this.
I don't even know where to begin, but I'll do my best because it's important for me to make videos and
share my life and at least even document it because it's something that I've always done
and I think that for many of you all who are in, have been, or will be in this situation
it could also help you guys too last week my mom passed away and I'll be honest
I still can't come to terms with it. I still feel like every time I say it i'm lying, like oh well
she'll be back next week, you know she's just on a trip she'll be back. I'll go into her room
before I go to bed and I'll look for her to say goodnight to her and wake up and look in her chair
where she would sit in and see if she's there and there's a big part of me that hopes that never
stops and I.. This is probably the worst thing and the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with
so far and I.. I don't know if I'll ever really be the same and.. I kind of wanted to share what happened
and talk a little bit more about her and just kind of.. just talk about it I guess,
so for a little bit of context I live in Austin Texas and I've lived here pretty much my whole life
I moved here when I was like six months old and the rest of my family and pretty much everybody
else in my family is in Florida, Georgia and New York and a few other states too
and that's pretty much about it, so here in Texas I've got my mom and my dad and whenever I was growing up
they were the two most important people in my life and my parents are divorced and I lived with my mom,
so I spent so much time with her and with only her, and I also want to make one thing
just absolutely crystal clear is that while this is a huge thing for me because
of how much time I spent with my mom my dad has been the best father that anybody could
ever ask for. He's been there for me he's taught me so many things and he's been
even the things that pissed me off whenever I was a kid that he would do, now whenever I'm getting older I think to myself,
well I'm going to do that probably to my kids too you know, it was for the best
so I don't want to make this in any way shape or form that, you know it's not about him too,
but my mom I lived with her and for the past 10 years I've taken care of her
I've been in a way a caretaker for her she was 70 years old, she was overweight
she smoked and she basically lived her life like a college freshman. She sat around
getting high and smoking cigarettes and eating fast food, drinking soda and
watching reruns of ancient aliens and to be fair, that's what she wanted to do
and she did exactly what she wanted and that is a good and also a bad thing
I tried for many years to try to get her to stop smoking and try to get her to take her diet and her health
more seriously, and she would occasionally make a half-hearted measure to do that, but for the
most part she wouldn't I learned about cigarettes about how bad they were when I was like eight or
nine years old, and I come home and I'm like did you know that this it can do this that
and the other thing, and I was like what is going on why are you doing this, why are you smoking these.
She just.. it could never really be understood to me why she continued smoking and I was just so upset
and I tried and I will always wonder if it was like my fault in a way because I would,
I would buy cigarettes for her, is it, is it my fault in a way that she is where she is and what happened,
happened. Because I bought the cigarettes for her the logical part in my brain tells me that
no it's not because somebody else would have just bought them for her anyway, but there's still
another part of my brain that does feel guilt and I don't know if that was the right decision or not
can you really protect the person from himself it's impossible and I did try
I failed though and.. anyway so, smoking for 50 years gives you something
called COPD, and my mom got COPD quite a while ago and over the years it's just gotten worse
that's the way the disease works and basically about like 10 years ago or so
she first went to the hospital for the first time and she came out with in a lot of ways
a clean bill of health and I tried to get her to you know like live differently, exercise more, etc.
and it didn't really happen I tried the garden that I've showed you all many times I planted that garden
in the hopes that she would go out and and like maybe take care of the plants or
something you know and that didn't really happen she just did what she wanted to do..
so the disease got worse right, and this is kind of the first time she went to the hospital
the second time and, then there was a long period of time where she didn't and then she
started walking around the house with a cane and I, I was like why are you doing this?
Why are you using a cane, just walk around normally and it was.. it was a childish and
stupid thing for me to think because I I knew why, I just didn't want
to admit it to myself and.. anyway so this is maybe a few months ago I don't want to make this video super long
is that a few months ago she.. she just kind of had really really bad breathing problems
like it went kind of from like, it was like zero to sixty or it was actually like if you want to talk about
her oxygen it was more like 95 to 60. and uh 75 something like that
her oxygen went down very drastically quite fast and I called.. I remember I was like right here out in this deck
and I called a nurse's hotline and they said that i needed to call an ambulance for her
right away and I didn't do that because she was just like begging me not to do that
don't, don't call an ambulance, don't call an ambulance don't do that and the reason is that her and I
we grew up quite poor and like not dirt poor and my dad has always had my back with things for sure
but we did grow up poor and in the process of that seeking medical care
in the united states is not necessarily the most reasonable prospect and so anyway
I was able to convince her to go down to the hospital that night and she was there for three
or four days and there was a good bit of relief for me because I was able to just kind of relax a little bit
and know that she was in good hands but I got a call maybe four or five days
afterwards from her and she was just so adamantly against being in the hospital
She did not want to be in the hospital that she said that if I didn't come down there and get her that
she was just gonna get a taxi and drive home herself and my mom's always had this.. it's been like a
streak of just kind of: "I'll do whatever i want to do it doesn't matter what the cost is"
and it was like in a way unrealistic like.. how could you possibly do that, but this is just what
she would say and I was so worried that she would hurt herself in the process of
trying to do that, that I went and I took her home against medical advice.. and again another thing that
I don't know if it was the right decision or not I was afraid that she would sabotage herself
in some other way and it just really scared me to even think about that because I didn't know
what was going to happen I could I I can't know what a person is going to do and so I just
kind of had to make the best decision I could and I don't know if it was the right one or not
so she went home with an oxygen machine and she didn't use it for quite a while
and then finally whenever she started to use it things kind of got.. things got better and
then they were just kind of on a slow decline they just kind of got worse and worse
and worse as the days went by and this was over maybe a two week period
and she didn't even use the oxygen machine I had to call the EMS because we had a,
a doctor's appointment for her and she she just couldn't get out of her chair and
finally I convinced her to let me call EMS I'll tell you something man, like I've never
encountered people that were more professional and more intelligent and competent than the people
that came in the ambulance and the fire truck to help her, both times. I consider myself so very lucky
that we had those people and we were able to have it taken care of in such an effective
way, excuse me. And obviously throughout the like the 10 years, I missed many opportunities
and many things that I couldn't really do whenever I was in my 20s because I had to take care of her
and do things for her and be there for her and she would always be very, she would always
say that oh it's fine I'll be fine I'll be fine but I knew it wasn't true and I.. I had to do those things
and I want to make one thing very clear is that I did every single thing like that with no regret,
no resentment, nothing. I would do that again I'd be doing that right now
if she was still in that house and whenever my dad gets older I'll be doing
that for him, and if you know I have a wife and she has problems I'll be doing that for her
that's who i am and I'll always do everything that I can
to help and protect people that I care and I love and anyway it was at a cost though and so throughout those years kind of the scope of things that
I would do and things that she would do waned, they waned much more over to my side
where I was doing all the laundry, I was doing all the dishes and everything and
towards the very end I was just doing everything, I would wake up in the morning and I would,
I would cook dinner for her, cook breakfast for her and then go back to sleep and then wake up and
make sure that she's okay and I could only sleep for maybe two hours a night
whenever this was happening and the first time that she ever really had like
a big health scare, this is in like 2012/2013 and ironically it's the reason,
her having this health scare, was the reason why I why I started making youtube videos because
I had to quit going to school because I couldn't bear to not be there and help her and
take care of her and back then we didn't have the money to hire a caretaker or a nurse or anything
we didn't even have the money to have hot water so anyway, that's whenever I started doing youtube
and I remember waking up and like hearing her screaming my name, and for the next like six months
or a year maybe two years it's hard for me to really remember back then,
I would not be able to sleep for more than like an hour and a half, two hours without hearing those screams in my head
and it waking me up and having to go out and check to see if she's still alive
and this, this started happening again recently and I couldn't really get any sleep
I couldn't rest at all, anytime I would wake up it would just be immediately a panic attack
and it was just awful and.. anyway so, fast forward to i guess maybe two weeks, three weeks
no two weeks ago, like three or four weeks ago i was out here in this exact chair
sitting in this tree house and I was, I was doing a news video about just different stuff
that I'd want to go online to talk about and in the process of that my mom texted me
and she asked me to bring her a pepsi and I went in to check on her and she was not doing well
and she was wanting to go to the hospital, you know within probably the next 24 to 48 hours
and I was glad to hear that especially with how she left last time because that's where
I thought she had been to begin with and.. I go and I come back and I'm sitting right here
in this chair looking at this this phone right here and talking and I just decide
I'm like I'm just too stressed out I have to.. I have to leave and I have to go and so I leave and
I go to lay down and I'm laying down stressed out like really worried and like my room's right next to her room
and.. just out of nowhere I hear a crash I hear glass breaking. I hear, I look up and
I see like lights reflected on like the side of the door and like, it's like going everywhere
I'm like what's going on like did you get a new light from amazon like what is this
because the reason why I wonder that is I guess I'll tell this story first
and then I'll get into her spending my money on amazon, anyway so
I go in and the floor is on fire, part of her is on fire and also the thing that she had
connected to her face with her oxygen machine was on fire. Because she was smoking
with the oxygen machine on and I I don't know why you would do that
I don't.. I don't understand it I don't, why do you, why do you, why
why why why why why do you do that and there's part of me that's very angry at her
I'm very upset it didn't have to be like this there's no reason for it to have been like this and anyway, so I put out the fire and it's like
a looney tunes, like a looney tunes, like a cartoon, where like there's like a bomb and
there's like a fuse and the fuse is being lit and it's going to the bomb, well the bomb was the
oxygen machine and her little tank connector was on fire and it was literally going towards it
and so I'm like frantically trying to put this out before it reaches the machine and it
blows up and meanwhile she's on the floor like you know she's just completely in shock and
she has no idea what's going on really and I think that mostly just in shock and I.. the last
words that she said to me before they took her to the hospital was I'm such an [ __ ] . Meaning that
she is for doing it so I think that she did feel like yeah I [ __ ] up here, which is like,
yeah you did and uh anyway so I put out the fire and I'm able to like give
her an [...] for her face, for her burns all over her face obviously, which surprisingly
we're not really that bad and we had to call the ambulance which then again she was telling me
don't call the ambulance, don't call the ambulance and it's like I see her there she has burn wounds
all over her face and she can barely breathe and she was on the oxygen 24/7 and she wanted to go to
the hospital anyway and so I called the ambulance again I don't know if it was the right decision
but out of all these you know questionable decisions that I'll think about for the rest of my life,
I feel like this is the one that I will think the least about, and.. anyway, so they take her to the hospital
and I don't get a call until like way later on that day and, I.. I find out that you know
she's in like an ICU for like a burn trauma and I go to see her in a couple of days
because she was on a ventilator at the beginning and I couldn't really interact with her
because she was like sedated and anyway so I do all that and I finally do see her and
the burns on her face were not really that bad and I.. The truth is that I held out hope
that she would pull through this until until the last day man until the last [ __ ] day
I was like oh you know things will turn around things will get better, things will get better
and I thought you know well she got sick pretty fast and like maybe she'll
just get better really fast, and I tried so hard to hold out hope and to believe and
I tried so many different things like I.. you know I would look things up I would
talk to my dad about it for hours every day I went to.. she raised us, not us me, us her and I
went to a church, to a Roman Catholic church I had communion and everything whenever I was young
and we went to mass every Sunday and I even went to our old church to you know pray for her and
light a candle for her and everything and I'm not a religious person in a very strong way,
I would say that I'm not, not a religious person I just I don't really know.. and anyway I went there
because I thought to myself well hey man if there's a one [ __ ] percent chance that, that this
could do something, like I'll be there every day and that's what I did, and.. I told everybody and I would go and sit with her and I would read all the comments that you all and
my friends would make for her and all the things people wanting her to get better and everything
to try to improve her spirits as much as I could try to just be as positive and happy as much as
I can be.. and it was really hard, it really like I've it's never really been like this before for me and
so this was, this was a lot and.. anyway, things were very back and forth, she would
be okay one day and bad the next day okay one day and bad the next day, and then they would
want her to wear like a mask for her breathing it was like supposed to regulate
like oxygen and like co2 and.. she, she didn't want to wear the mask and it
was like a fight with like the doctors and the and her and it was another [ __ ] thing and.. I I got a call from my dad and we had
to meet with like all the doctors and everybody because they wanted to actually have like a
conversation to get everybody on the same page and whenever we did that they pretty much
told me and my dad that she had end-stage COPD it had nothing really to do with the burns, like
she was in critical condition before that fire even happened and we tried everything that
we could. Tried different types of treatments different types of like machines everything
and finally it got down to the point where we either had to put her on a ventilator or we had
to just make her as comfortable as possible and they told me that.. and I knew that i looked at her
and like she had so many other things wrong with her heart problems like everything i mean she's
70 years old and overweight and it's like we put her on the ventilator we're just waiting
for something else bad to happen you know that's we're just waiting on.. we're waiting on the next
thing to happen and I knew it would happen and it was kind of already happening with some other
secondary problems that she was having like it was just it was not a realistic solution
and they and we all agreed that if she went on that ventilator she'd probably just never
come off of it and i couldn't really bear to to put her through that and.. so we tried
to just make her as comfortable as possible and that's pretty much what happened and
again I just, I don't know if that was the right decision.. you know we had a
lot of conversations about her quality of life everything and it was all just [ __ ] grim man
it was just fire and brimstone grim and I just.. it was the hardest decision I'd ever had to
make and my dad and I obviously made it together and.. I don't know if it was the right decision but I'm pretty much certain that
it was, it was inevitable and.. my mom like she wasn't just like a
mom for me.. like Zach and Cody and [...] and Cameron and Jeff and.. AJ and everybody else in my neighborhood and
in a way you know our little makeshift family she would always ask about Cody and Jeff and she
would say how are my other sons doing and.. it was so hard to tell Cody
and Zach man it really was oh man it really was like I
I'm not an emotional person but instead of being filled with like grief
it's just filled me with so much emptiness she was my best friend and I spent.. I would
come home and I would be so happy to see her and I would lock the door whenever I'd leave so
nobody could come and like bother her or anything she was just so precious to
me and so important to me and.. it wasn't just to me it was to all my friends too and I want to say that so many of.. so many people
reached out so many of you guys have reached out and been so supportive and so you've shared
like there's a guy I talked to a couple of days ago and [ __ ] man the guy's going through the
exact same thing that we had to go through like he's in that he's in basically the stage of
the meeting with the doctors at this point and [ __ ] dude like and that's the kind of [ __ ]
like that's why I'm making this video man because I know that I'm not the first
person to have to deal with this I feel like I should share
what's happened to me and some of the people like everybody in OTK especially Tips, Tips would check on me pretty much
every day. He has been just so supportive and everything of me and everything I've
just been so lucky my friends Zach and Cody and other people too obviously you all might
not really know have just been there like my dad has just been there for me and I've been
there for him too like you gotta remember like my mom and my dad knew each
other for 50 [ __ ] years it was I think it was a lot
harder for him than he lets on and that really does kind of make me sad but anyway.. also, whenever I told Izzy
that my mom was in the hospital she had a.. there's this little like Swedish horse
and she had a special hand carved Swedish horse sent to the house and she wanted me
to give it to my mom whenever she came back home and whenever she found out that that
might not happen I brought it directly to the hospital and I gave it to my mom along
with also a Swedish cooking book so she could look at all the different meals and everything
and my mom, the horses were her favorite animal it made her so happy and Izzy was there for me
like every day and we talked about it and her and my mom were very close too and they spent a
lot of time talking and just being together and.. not a whole lot I guess but as much as you would
expect from you know two people that live in the same house and anyway whenever they
were both living in the same house with me we pretty much were running a miniature
Amazon warehouse, there's i'm not even kidding like probably five to ten packages coming to the house
every single day that between the two of them they would order and my mom of course was using,
her social security does not really pay that well so she was using my card and I, she would
buy so much stuff and like we had no room for this stuff but it made her so happy and how
could I say no, I mean she's so old it was hard for her to do anything this is one of the only
things that she could do to make herself happy of course I, of course I did it and.. but it was a pain in the ass having to throw
away all the boxes every week though and.. yeah I really wanted to say that so many of,
so many people have been so much, so so important to me through this and to
all of you thank you so much and I for like what am i gonna do now
like what's what's gonna happen now I don't know when I'll be back to
streaming on my main channel I have no idea I really don't I have to like obviously we have to
do like a funeral and I have to see my family and there's a lot that I have to do and it's not
going to be simple and it'll involve traveling and everything and so I can't really say when
however I would like to come on my alt stream and just kind of give my [ __ ] opinion
about things and talk about stuff that i'm reading online that I have to give my two
cents for because.. it's either I talk to the camera or I sit in front of a mirror and
I almost have the conversation with myself so I just have to get that out there
and so I do hope to continue making maybe youtube content I do on my second stream
maybe a couple times a week maybe hopefully other than that, just you know keep up with
my Twitter and I'll let you guys know what's going to happen and I want to say to everybody and
not just you know my close friends and family I really appreciate everything
that you all have done and I know how much many of you all like
loved my mom and thought that she was great I got so many good comments about her and
people were so nice and I thank you so much it's made me feel so humble and so small
to realize that I had that many people around me who care and I really appreciate
every single one of you thank you I don't really know if my
life will ever be the same I was such a good boy and we just would sit
here in this house and play video games and hang out and she'd make us like cupcakes and we
were just good boys it was so [ __ ] good man it was so [ __ ] good and I feel like the truth
is that this is what happens to everybody and now I guess it's my turn to
give that to somebody else that's the most that I can really say I think that's what she'd want to she was the most genuine and pure-hearted and kind person that
I've ever known and I think that from now on I'm going to try to be a
little bit less of an [ __ ] try I really am, just try to be a little
bit more relaxed and more okay, so.. I'll be honest I'm glad
I'm done with this video I wanted to tell you all pretty much what happened
and how things went with me and where I'm at I hope to see you all soon and I'll probably
have new videos coming out and I'll be back soon thank you guys so much
I'll see you later peace..
