DEAR BEL,

I AM torn between my mother’s needs due to stroke-induced disability and my own dire health, after battling breast cancer for five years.

I’m now back on chemo. Multiple operations and powerful drugs have left me physically weak and not much use to Mother.

My sister has taken on the role of main carer, controlling almost every aspect of her life, while bringing up two young children and trying to keep up her career, working from home. I appreciate the burden she bears and how demanding her life is. But we do not have a good relationship.

Visiting Mother (an hour’s drive) can be hard, due to my condition. I have begged her to use some of her savings for carers. But my sister has almost complete control of our mother’s finances, and Mother won’t discuss using her own money to help herself.

At 80, and once a fiercely independent woman, she’s now a wizened sparrow, like a prisoner in her own home, only seeing social services carers, my sister (who devotes a lot of time to daily needs) and me on brief visits.

Her only outings are to medical appointments — she hasn’t even been in the garden she adores as somebody has to help her outside and I’m not strong enough.

A possible pleasure, food, is also denied her, as my (rather obsessive) sister has her on a particular diet, even though Mother has been tested for food intolerances and has none.

Everyone in our circle agrees she should be able to enjoy good food. But my sister has banished even fruit, which my mother loves, so she is always constipated. She lives on a dreary diet and I have to collude, as Mother is too afraid to challenge my sister.

You’ll say I must talk to my sister! I tried — in a long email she ignored. She punished my mother instead by doing only the minimum. When I asked my sister to consider extra private care, she texted: ‘Do what you want.’

I arranged a chat with a private care agency to assess my mother’s needs — changing the appointment to fit my sister’s schedule — but the day before the appointment, my mother called on my sister’s phone, very upset, and told me to cancel everything, she said she didn’t need any extra care.

Friends have tried talking to my sister — to no avail. The stress of seeing Mother so reduced is taking its toll on my health. My children say I must look after myself, as she may be my mother, but I am theirs.

They worry my inevitable death will be hastened by my mother and sister’s refusal to use her considerable financial resources to improve her life. What do you think about this complex dilemma about conflicting needs?