On Monday, we brought you Caring for the Aging Forum, a program about challenges faced by Kentucky's more than 600,000 caregivers.

During the forum, we highlighted the experience of a single mom in Lexington and what's called the Sandwich Generation, where she's caring for a child and her elderly mother who has late stage Alzheimer's disease.

Our Laura Rogers shares some of her conversation with Liz Hodge on the challenges of balancing caregiving with life's other responsibilities.

She has just really declined so very, very quickly.

Liz Hodges mother, Linda, now 76, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease six years ago.

We asked her, Can you take a shower on your own?

Well, yes, of course I can.

Can you cook a meal?

Yes, of course I can.

But if you let her go, try to do it.

She can't find the kitchen sink.

Or she turns the other way in the shower and reaches for the water and couldn't find it.

Hodge and her three siblings had to make some difficult decisions, which included consulting their mother's will to see who would become Linda's primary caregiver.

She had named me out of all my siblings who had the most strained relationship as her guardian.

That strained relationship has added another layer to an already emotionally draining experience.

There's a lot of childhood trauma that I'm processing while I'm caregiving, which is a difficult thing to do.

Well, you weren't there for me.

Why do I need to be there for you now?

You know I'm helping you to go to the bathroom.

Where were you for my high school graduation.

Despite that complicated back story, a silver lining.

Hodge says she and her mother have bonded since that devastating diagnosis.

So in her forgetting our history, it helped me heal our history.

And so I've able to have a relationship here with her now that I would have never had before.

A relationship that has included finding the best fit for long term care as her health has declined.

Linda is now in memory care, which is typical for an Alzheimer's patient.

They need a lot of assistance.

They can't care for themselves anymore.

They can't bathe themselves.

A lot of times, not mobile can go nonverbal and incontinent and things like that that they just need continuous care for.

Hodge once worked as a certified medical assistant.

Knowledge and training that have proved helpful through her mother's many hospitalizations.

I've been able to make decisions for our family, for her that I know are in her best interest.

But finding balance and support is still a challenge.

It takes a lot out of the caregiver.

I have to keep up my job and I have to keep up being a mom and I have to keep up trying to be a friend and keeping up some kind of life and sleeping.

There's also the financial burden.

Hodge and her siblings have liquidated their mother's assets to pay for her long term around the clock care.

It is $9,000 a month, a month to care for her.

Our fear as a family is what happens if we run out of that money?

Who's going to pay $89,000 a month to take care of her?

Which does add stress to the situation, along with guilt for not being everywhere all at once.

Especially women.

We are the caretakers, and so we feel guilty if we're not at home making a hot dinner for your daughter.

Plus being at the nursing home when your mom is sick.

Along with juggling those responsibilities, there is the sadness and grief that come with losing a parent.

Glenda is now in hospice care.

The nurses were driven nuts because they would hear Liz Hodge, Liz Hodge, Liz harder times.

She would ask for me.

Constant late.

She's she.

Stop asking for me.

She doesn't know who I am when I come.

Now she knows I'm a familiar warm face that she loves.

As he prepares for that final goodbye, she is thinking about her own mortality and eventual end of life care.

I stay healthy and active and do all the things, But, you know, at some point, is this going to be me and my daughter taking care of me like this?

Thank you, Laura, for that.

You can see more of Monday night's discussion on caring for the aging Forum online OnDemand at Katie Borg.

It's part of a new initiative on aging called Next Chapter that focuses on issues facing Kentucky's aging population and their loved ones.

You can learn more at Katie Borg slash next chapter.