“My Ashes Could Be in an Urn” — Bedridden, Sick Mom Gets Asked What She’s Cooking for Dinner

On TikTok, a mom's post about being asked to cook dinner for her children despite being bedridden is resonating with a lot of other mothers on the app.

Ashley Hoskins (@ashleyhoskins7) posted a viral video to the popular social media platform where she recorded herself recovering from a bout of illness.

"When you're on your death bed as a mom!" Ashley writes in a text overlay of her TikTok video, which begins with her staring into the camera, her back propped up against what looks like the headboard of a bed.

She has a medical apparatus attached to her body near her heart and the left portion of her face is significantly swollen. Her lips, especially, look turgid and it seems like she is having difficulty breathing.

Off camera, a voice can be heard. It's Ashley's kid, who asks: "Hey Mom, what are you cooking for dinner tonight?"

Ashley turns to look at the kid incredulously as the video cuts out.

You're probably wondering what type of condition would cause someone's body to swell in such a way, and in a hashtag for a caption in her clip, Ashley named the condition: hereditary angiodema, or HAE.

According to MedlinePlus, HAE is "a disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of severe swelling (angioedema). The parts of the body that are most often affected by swelling are the limbs, face, intestinal tract, and airway."

The sources goes on to state that HAE is "estimated to affect 1 in 50,000 people," and that "HAE due to C1-INH deficiency accounts for the vast majority of cases."

In another video, Ashley documented the beginning of the HAE attack. She points to the top of her lip, where she says that the swelling started, writing that she's about "50 minutes away" from her house.

In a text overlay of the video she writes that she "forgot [her] rescue meds" when the bout occurred as well. By the time she makes it home, her lip has swelled significantly. She later demonstrates how she needs to inject the medication in her body, and notes that she actually poked the needle into the wrong spot on her chest at first.

The first clip that she uploaded where her child asks what she's making for dinner is the aftermath of that day.

Multiple people who responded to her video remarked that they, too, were on the receiving end of requests from their family despite being ill: moms never get a day, or even an hour off it seems.

This one woman said that her ex had the gall to ask her what was for dinner after she just got out of surgery: "My husband woke me after sinus surgery and asked what I was preparing for dinner. We're not married anymore."

While someone else penned: "Throwing up and hugging the toilet and my husband comes in and says, 'I know you’re dying right now, I get it, but it’s chaos out there.'"

For another TikTok user, their own familial request for assistance came right before they were going into surgery themselves: "Ha! My teenager called me asking me to bring his computer charger to school when I was in pre-op for a hysterectomy — kids..."

However, there were some folks who thought that this kind of reliance on mom is only natural: "My mom died a few years ago. I still catch myself picking up the phone to call her about problems almost once a week before I remember she's not here anymore."

And it seems like Ashley espouses this same type of viewpoint as well, as she wrote: "Moms are what make families, families. We are the ones bringing the snacks, and favorites. And helping when they are sick. It’s our superpower."