Taking care of mom and aunt who are collapsing simultaneously - mental illness, mobility and stroke

Eight weeks ago, I was living a normal life living with my 78 year old mom and checking in weekly with her 76 year old sister who lived on her own in an apartment. I had been working at home for the past 15 months because of COVID closures, and had gone on vacation and was due to return to the office the following week. My mom just suddenly had a complete unexplained physical and mental meltdown and I had to return early from my vacation. Suddenly needed specialist visits (some kind of speech impediment that turned out not to be stroke) and anxiety meds which she will not take regularly. In the meantime she lost her beloved cat, which she had been dreading (the cat was 15 yrs old) and this only made her state worse. (My mom had many stresses leading up to this moment: close aunt of hers died in winter, longtime neighbor died in spring, good Internet-friend died in spring, then she was turned down for knee surgery she really wanted, and then the cat died.)

During all this while my sister and I were dealing with my mom's collapse, my aunt (the 76 year-old sister) had a disaster - her basement apartment flooded, leading to extreme chaos. Unfortunately my aunt is an alcoholic and hoarder who we had been trying to get help for but she was very resistant. We had concluded earlier that she was unable to care for herself and live on her own but she still drove and could feed herself so APS wasn't interested even though her apartment was an extreme mess. Landlord gave her a ridiculous deadline of 48 hours to remove all her things so that her carpets could be replaced. The deadline was later extended, but the stress overcame her and my mother and the whole family as various scrambles to secure movers and help with her massive amounts of stuff came to nothing. We were able to secure a new apartment for her but unable to get help with the stuff (even though we urged her to only take her most important things). In this day and age it is impossible to schedule movers or find any help with moving (we are a small family, just my sister and I the only able bodied).

On top of it, my mom's mental condition continued to deteriorate - ranting, anger, she doesn't really like her sister (my aunt) so they got on each others nerves because we had to take my aunt in and she was sleeping on the couch - not good for her.

Last week, the worst happened... my aunt had a stroke.

My aunt is now in the hospital being assessed for rehab. We have told a social worker that she was unable to live on her own safely even before the stroke happened. We hope at best that she can live in an apartment with daily help. She does not seem to have really bad aphasia or paralysis and could benefit from rehab, but she has episodes of "time slips" and confused speech that have led her doctors to believe she can't make her own medical decisions. Of course, I defer to their judgment. She communicates very well and has less time-slips when she has family around, so I visit her twice daily as I work right next door to the hospital. I try to talk to her nurses as much as possible but rarely see them.

The problem is that my aunt gave my mother's name as her medical contact under HIPAA and now my mom is making medical decisions for her. I am most concerned about the fact that my mom is mentally unbalanced and does not understand the true situation with my aunt since she is unable to visit and see how she is. My mom is also saying very inappropriate and unhelpful things (personality grudges) about my aunt's mental state to the nurses who call, which I fear are giving them a wrong picture of her baseline cognition. When we have important questions to ask the nurses, my mom tends to go off script and pursue her own emotional agenda.

(Part 1)