I'm really sorry about your friend! I can attest to how bad the American healthcare system is. Sometimes I think, aside from urgent injuries or life-threatening medical problems it might be best to steer clear of it altogether. There are great, well-intentioned, people working within the system but the system is compromised by Big Pharma and completely broken. It's become much more about extracting as much money as they can than it is about healing.

I try my very best to show up for those in my life I care about who are in need but I'm, shall we say, very selective in how I do that. There are so many people in the world today who are habitually in need or in trouble because of their own actions/decisions. Has it always been this way? Helping these kinds of people monetarily or bailing them out in other ways is like applying a band-aid to try to hold back a raging river. A lot of people are caught in toxic loops and are addicted to the help and the sympathy. It's so tough because you can't help but feel as though you're judging. Sometimes withholding the help they're asking for is so counterintuitive, especially when they know you have the means. I have a very tough phone call to make this weekend to a friend who was just diagnosed with metastatic bladder cancer. I'm not looking forward to it.