You are not alone.

I created Mom’s Cancer because I wish someone had created it for me. I began serializing Mom’s Cancer on the Internet in early 2004 as a kind of underground journalism: dispatches from the front lines of a battle into which my family stumbled unprepared. I worked anonymously to protect my privacy and my family, who never asked to become cartoon characters, and also to suggest that the story could be about anybody anywhere. Readership grew by word of mouth. People who needed it found it.

Although Mom’s Cancer is very specifically about my family and our experience fighting my mother’s metastatic lung cancer, I was astonished by how many readers saw their own stories in ours. I was also gratified to get letters from medical professionals and educators saying that Mom’s Cancer helped them understand their patients’ perspectives and asking permission to use it in their curricula. That was an unexpected privilege, as is the opportunity to reach even more readers through print.

When I started writing and drawing Mom’s Cancer, I didn’t know how the story would end. I resolved to be a good reporter and tell it as squarely as I could. Mom’s Cancer is not a nuts-and-bolts medical manual. Tests and treatments vary; the emotional and practical impacts of a serious illness are nearly universal. Members of my family remember some of these events very differently, and my portrayals of them aren’t always flattering. The fact that my mother, father, and sisters still graciously and even enthusiastically support Mom’s Cancer means everything to me—another unexpected privilege.

Mom’s Cancer is an honest, earnest effort to turn something bad into something good. Although I distrust stories with lessons, here is one: No one will care more about your life than you do, and no one is better qualified to chart its course than you are. You are the expert.