My mom (Linguistics professor Dr. Rita Deyoe-Chiullán) has spent her entire adult life (57 years!) teaching students at all levels, from Elementary age Bilingual kids to 7th Grade Reading to Masters and Doctoral candidates.

We are reaching out because we need financial help to provide the level of care she will need for the rest of her life. She wants people to know that she is ok and continuing to make progress, but has been through a hell of a year and two months.

After a near-fatal fall at home in February of 2025, Rita has spent just over 12 months in inpatient care at a total of 10 different facilities, with various surgeries and procedures along the way. Over the course of that year, she was formally diagnosed with dementia that has progressed enough that she cannot live independently or have unsupervised access to a phone or the internet. That said, she is still very much most of the Rita that many people reading this have known.

Just before her 79th birthday last month, she finally qualified for and made the move to an Assisted Living community.

She has already made friends she calls her “Golden Girls.” She’s made plans to take over directing the planning and management of the courtyard garden she can see from her window, with the encouragement of the staff. Two weeks in, she said “it feels like home,” to both of our surprise.

She is also determined to complete a children’s picture book (with my help) detailing the surreal, impossible journey she’s been on over the past year. We are both looking forward to having time and peace of mind to start working on it.

The more she has been able to focus on and believe in a productive future for herself, the more she has thrived.

A year ago, neither one of us would have believed how far she has come.

Two Ticking Clocks

Unfortunately, due to being caught in the growing epidemic of financial scams targeting the elderly, Rita does not have the financial resources to pay for the level of care she will need for the rest of her life. Her medical insurance and basic expenses are covered, but not her all-inclusive Assisted Living care fees, which cost just over $5000 a month.

Without going into further detail than she has told me she is comfortable sharing, there is no lower-cost alternative that will meet her needs, both now and in the future as her dementia progresses.

To keep my mom alive and properly cared for over the last year, I have exhausted my own savings and what I can afford to contribute while keeping myself fed and housed. I’ve also reached the limit of the financial generosity that can be offered by family and close friends, primarily and most especially my glorious, sainted Aunt.

The reason I am sharing this far and wide today in particular is that, as I write this, we are in danger of her eviction due to last-ditch, hoped-for sources of funding falling through and her current rent going as-yet unpaid.

Two Ways You Can Help

1. If you are able to help contribute to the immediate need, you can send via Zelle (QR code above), PayPal, or Venmo (preferred in that order).

If, by some miracle, you have the resources and are willing and able to individually cover a significant portion (or all) of that $5000 for the current month, please get in touch directly by email (whatritataughtme@gmail.com) if you don’t have my cell number.

2. Paying for a recurring subscription to Office Hours (this “every Sunday morning” newsletter) helps guarantee her ability to continue getting the level of care she needs on an ongoing basis. It is set to “pay what you can” and will renew automatically each month.

Just to state it directly, rest assured that all proceeds from subscriptions and one-off/one-time contributions go directly toward Rita’s living and medical expenses as well as the significant medical debt she has incurred over the past year. As her one-person support system, I am also making sure that even if something were to happen to me, the proceeds of those subscriptions will continue to fund her care as part of my own estate planning.

The Zelle contributions go directly to Rita’s bank account, and the only reason the PayPal and Venmo go to mine are that her accounts there were closed due to scammers taking control of them.

Thank you for reading this much, and especially for caring about my mom and me.

Please understand there are limits on my time and bandwidth as I race against an impossible deadline. I fully expect pushing this out across both of our networks will quickly overload my ability to respond for a bit.

For my part, I am as “ok” as I can be, and have my own good days and bad days. I plan to discuss some of the caregiver aspects of my past year or so in the newsletter, particularly things I wish I had known or prepared in advance.

Rita has always been fond of telling students and colleagues that one must never give up on yourself…especially when the “conventional wisdom” or people with no investment in you tell you that you should. Despite being told at multiple stages that she “couldn’t” or “wouldn’t” be able to recover further, she has kept on pushing.

Even at stages when she has hit a wall and resolved to just give up, she has come back around every time and “gotten back on the horse.”

She is still doing 5 days a week of physical and occupational therapy rehab, and continues to make progress.

She has long embraced the motto of her home state, Kansas: ad astra per aspera. “Through hardships to the stars.” She has not let go of her hope yet, despite cosmic forces trying to get in the way.

I intend to do the same.

“Office Hours” and the Semester(s) Ahead

So…why a newsletter?

I pitched Office Hours to my mom as a way to update students, colleagues, and friends while also allowing for our likely need to have it also serve as a “break glass in case of emergency” financial plan in lieu of her being able to continue teaching. The few people who have been in the loop over the last year have all asked how they can help, and until we had a concrete idea of what mom’s new normal would be, let alone the “need,” there was no way to formulate what the “ask” would need to be.

Aside from financial support, Office Hours allows me to combine broadcasting updates and engaging my mom with productive work that she can contribute to, as much or as little as she is able.

One of the things she misses the most is serving as Publication Coordinator for an Academic Journal, which she was still doing until she had her fall. Serving as my editor/publisher gives her that sense of responsibility and purpose in a time when she has felt helpless in ways that she never has before.

What she liked the most about my pitch for Office Hours was the pretense of styling it after a sort of ongoing Honors Seminar in newsletter form. She laughed at the idea of the listed professor being far too busy with the rest of her work and left this to an overworked and underpaid Teaching Assistant to cobble together. In all seriousness, the hope is that Office Hours at once approximates her voice and exacting standards.

She will definitely let me know if it does not, since she will review each installment before sending for as long as she continues to be able.

…this is her course, after all. (Ahem)

When you subscribe to Office Hours, you’ll get an introductory email that goes over the “course syllabus” so that you’ll know what to expect.

For those who don’t know my mom personally or professionally, the first proper installment of Office Hours will include an “Intro to Rita” primer of sorts. It will also cover my own near-fatal experience on my way to do a wellness check on Rita last February. I’m still alive writing this, so you already know I’m ok.

Yes, that is definitely what one calls “burying the lede,” but to be fair, there’s a lot of lede to go around.

Thank you for reading, contributing, subscribing, caring, or any combination of the above.

Please share this post with anyone you think should see it.

The first weekly installment of Office Hours will arrive in your inbox this Sunday morning, Central Texas Time.

-Moisés Chiullán