It's wonderful that you've made progress on the puzzle you found yourself facing. But in reading your essay, the subtext that comes through more strongly than the medical dilemma is a sense of disorientation, loneliness, and anxiety. Even this comment hints at it in its opening disclaimer.
For all I know, you see family every weekend and have friends over for drinks and games every night, but the story suggests that your inner experience of navigating a deep personal struggle involved a lot of private worry, disappointment, and lack of practical culturally implicit skills like how to develop a relationship with a doctor.
Since you seem to have some momentum in self care at the moment, you might want to consider a deeper look at what's going on for you there. You might find consistent therapy helpful as you do so.
Other than disagreeing with your take on relationships with medical practitioners, this is an excellent, well written comment. There are support groups for the family of cancer patients specifically because health is intertwined with how people live.
Creating some kind of regular time to process this long journey, however that works best into the day to day, may help set the stage for the next act.
Thank you for the comment. There are definitely issues you touched on intertwined with this story, and I don't fully understand them and will be digging deeper with therapy. Something I put off for far too long as I was busy dealing with this
For all I know, you see family every weekend and have friends over for drinks and games every night, but the story suggests that your inner experience of navigating a deep personal struggle involved a lot of private worry, disappointment, and lack of practical culturally implicit skills like how to develop a relationship with a doctor.
Since you seem to have some momentum in self care at the moment, you might want to consider a deeper look at what's going on for you there. You might find consistent therapy helpful as you do so.