You get told it’s just pneumonia, but it keeps coming back for years.

Eventually someone figures it out and says you have mesothelioma. You travel the country for a few years, looking for treatment wherever you can. It costs everything you have.

Somewhere along the way, you have to put down $120,000 in cash for a surgery that gives you a few more years. But your last years are still mostly pain and exhaustion.

I wish my uncle hadn’t died the way he did.