SCANXIETY.

I could write a book trying to describe this term and it wouldn’t even come close for someone who has not been through it themselves to understand. Scanxiety is the abject terror experienced in the time between either a CT or MRI scan and the results. This wait can range between three days (which is an extremely quick turnaround) and two weeks (the usual time) but whatever the time frame, each day becomes like living in treacle while being forced to watch a horror film in your mind.

My role during these periods is of resident cheerleader; I am the one who keeps Greg boyant and will rattle off to anyone who asks a rational, statistics based reason as to why everything is going to be ok. But I’m not impenitratable to the fear of what hangs over our heads; in me, it manifests by forgetting how to make a cup of tea, in never knowing where I’ve put my diary, in having baths every day because I need to feel the comfort of being emerged in hot water. I can feel my heart beating through my chest, even when just in Tesco buying raspberries and milk.

I’m not sure there is much to do in these periods other than endure them. I’ve had drinks out with friends, started doing exercise with kettlebells every morning, listening to audio books as I do the washing to distract me but the fear is still there. Scanxiety can run faster than my little brain.

There is a massive lesson to learn here, if you are willing to do so. That to sit with fear, to look at it and accept it for what it is can help dissolve it in front of you. Or maybe sometimes it won’t at all, that to look it straight in the eye will create a wild panic that feels insurmountable but that’s ok. Fear is a transient emotion just like happiness, joy or ease and it will end. When it does end, you can see that you survived the feelings and can move on to hopefully more comfortable emotions, until it all starts again. Personally, I have experienced this again and again over the past couple of years and while I most certainly am not a fan of these emotions, I know that I will live through them and hopefully feel stronger and more resilient afterwards.

* Stacey Heale has left her career as a fashion lecturer to focus on her two lively little girls and husband, Delays frontman Greg Gilbert, who was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in November 2016. She launched the viral campaign Give4Greg to raise funds for lifesaving treatment: gofundme.com/give4greg. You can read more at her blog, www.beneaththeweather.com