Christy,
I would substitute "useless" with "helpless". Somethings just don't go the way we plan in spite of our best intentions. You have been a most excellent and caring patient advocate. Your role has been made even harder by being in a third party situation by 2 people who are in denial about their bad health habits. Maybe the lesson here is that these kinds of problems can rob you of your so called "golden years". I heard somebody say once "If I had known that I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself".

Cancer is an epidemic is the US. A person here dies every minute of every day. At least 5 died while I wrote this. It's not surprising to me why the health care system is stressed out and why delays occur.

Social health care systems like they have in Canada and Sweden are notoriusly ineffecient compared to the US system. Although millions have no health care coverage in the US. There are tradeoffs with every system.

In my case it took almost 2 months from the original Dx to the beginning of treatment and everything was put on a rush.