Before I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in December 2018, I’d never heard of MD Anderson. And cancer doesn’t run in my family, so I didn’t need to know anything about cancer — much less cancer hospitals.

That made my decision to go to MD Anderson for leukemia treatment really hard in some respects. For one thing, it’s 822 miles from my home. For another, I have three kids, who were 16, 14, and almost 9 at the time. And...