What the waiting is actually made of

Four things, and none of them is stupidity.

The chain. One practitioner leads to the next, because a treatment that has not worked is read as proof of severity rather than as a reason to try something else.

The hiding. Families conceal what is happening because of what it will do to a marriage prospect, or because of what people will say. This is one of the biggest single reasons care arrives late, and it should be named rather than tiptoed around. Concealing an illness from a doctor does not protect anybody.

The clock nobody is watching. There is no appointment letter for the wait. Months pass without anyone deciding that months should pass.

And sometimes, being told to stop a medicine. That one has its own step below, because it is the most dangerous thing on this list.