A shared universe › Blog › Waiting for the results of a medical test · Español
You’ve had the test and been told someone will call. Ever since, your stomach tightens every time the phone rings. Waiting for medical results can take days or weeks, and the people who have studied it know that it can sometimes weigh as much as the news itself.
In 2011, the American writer Bruce Feiler coined an English word in a newspaper article for the unease cancer patients feel around every scan: “scanxiety”, a blend of scan and anxiety.
A few years later, an American medical team put that word in the title of a study and set out to measure what it described. They asked 103 people with advanced lung cancer, and 83% said they felt some of this anxiety around their tests. It was no less common in those who had lived with the illness longer, nor did it depend on how things were going, and the stronger it was, the worse their quality of life.
You don’t have to be that seriously ill to know it. A mammogram you’re asked to repeat, a biopsy, a blood test with an odd value: any doubt about your health is enough to leave your mind with no rest.
The psychologist Kate Sweeny, of the University of California, Riverside, has spent years studying how we live through waiting. To do so she has repeatedly followed a group with a long wait and a fixed date: law graduates sitting the bar exam in California, who take about four months to find out whether they have passed.
In one of those studies, with 50 graduates, she saw that the anxiety was not the same the whole time. It was high just after the exam, dropped around the middle of the wait and rose again in the last few weeks, peaking the day before the results. As the date drew near, even the most optimistic grew more pessimistic.
If something similar happens to you, it doesn’t mean anything is wrong, or that you’re coping worse than other people. It is simply the shape waits tend to take. Knowing that can lift a fright off you when, a few days before the appointment, everything starts to look darker.
Many people brace for the worst from the first day, thinking that if bad news does come, it will hurt less. Sarit Golub, Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson put this to the test in 2009 with two laboratory experiments and a field study. People who expected something bad felt worse during the wait than those who expected something good. But when the result arrived, what each person had expected made no noticeable difference to how they felt.
Pessimism in advance cost them bad days and saved no pain afterwards. Sweeny reaches a similar idea. The most bearable approach would be to keep hoping for as long as you can and to prepare for the bad news close to the moment of truth, not weeks beforehand. That last-minute preparing is natural: almost everyone does it without meaning to.
Preparing doesn’t have to mean picturing the worst scene in every detail, either. It can be something more practical: thinking about who you would call, what you would ask the doctor, who could go with you to the appointment.
Sweeny and her team have tried several ways of making the wait easier. These three worked well:
In everyday life, that might be a crossword, a bit of knitting, a new recipe, sorting through old photos or going out at night to look at the sky. The point is not to run away from the fear but to give your mind somewhere else to be for a while.
In another study, with 184 graduates waiting for their results, Sweeny’s team looked at couples. Those who felt their partner was attentive to what they needed had more positive emotions, felt they were coping better and slept better during the wait.
What each person needs is not always the same. Some days you feel like talking about the fear; others, like being distracted; others, like nobody asking. Saying so out loud helps the person beside you get it right.
If you are the one keeping someone company, rather than promising that everything will be fine, which nobody can know, it helps to ask what would do them good today, and to be there.
When the day finally comes, it can help to go with someone, to bring your questions written down and to ask them to repeat anything you don’t understand. If the news is bad, you don’t have to decide everything in that appointment: you can ask for time and another appointment so you can ask questions more calmly. If it is good, give yourself permission to celebrate and tell people.
If the wait keeps you awake for weeks, or the news feels too big, talk to your doctor. And if you feel you can’t cope, lean on someone you trust. In Spain you can talk to a person at the Teléfono de la Esperanza, 717 003 717, at any time. If you are thinking of ending your life, call 024: it is free and answered 24 hours a day. If you are in another country, call your local emergency number or a helpline there.
A star with “What I hope for” has room for “I get the results tomorrow”, with no more details. You can light it in A shared universe for yourself or for someone you love. While you wait, whoever passes by will leave a touch or a line of hope.