Wayne Schlicht 
What Is Scanxiety? Meaning, Symptoms & Cancer Scan Anxiety Scanxiety means the anxiety, fear, or emotional distress that can happen before, during, or after a medical scan, especially while waiting for the results. The word scanxiety combines “scan” and “anxiety” and is commonly used by cancer patients to describe the worry surrounding CT scans, PET … Read more
I Was Never Supposed to See This Father’s Day. It is Father’s Day. And I am so thankful. This time last year, I was given four months to live. By the grace of God, a miracle, and one knowledgeable pharmacist, I am still here. I have had a year I was never supposed to have. … Read more
There is something that happens when you have been living with stage four cancer long enough. You stop treating days as ordinary. You cannot afford to. Every morning you wake up, and your feet hit the floor, you understand in your bones that this day was not guaranteed. It is a gift. And you try, … Read more
CT Scan Miracle Nobody Expected. Still Here — Available Now on Amazon For more than four years, I have been fighting for my life. Today, I am sharing that fight in a different way. My memoir, Still Here, is now published and available on Amazon. This book was written during some of the hardest … Read more
In the early morning hours of April 7, around 2 AM, I sat in a dark, quiet house and wrote to you. My wife and our oldest son were away in Tennessee helping her mom recover from hip replacement surgery, so it was just me, drenched in sweat, unable to sleep, six hours away from … Read more
If you’ve ever waited for cancer scan results, you know the feeling. The anxiety, the silence, the mental replay of every decision. This is what scanxiety feels like at 2 AM, when sleep won’t come and your mind won’t stop. The Night Before the Scan It’s 2 AM. I can’t sleep. I’m sitting in the … Read more
It’s Christmas Day, and I’m thinking about all of you. Every year, we hurry to shop for gifts, travel by plane and car, and spend hours cooking meals. When we gather, people reminisce about past Christmases. The good, the bad, and the funny. I have my share of all three. Like the Christmas I found … Read more
It’s two days before Christmas, and I’m sitting here reflecting on a year I wasn’t sure I’d see the end of. On June 3rd, my 25th wedding anniversary, I got the biopsy results confirming what I feared most. Stage 4. The cancer had spread to my lungs and bloodstream. What should have been a day … Read more
A Story of Faith, Food, and Finding the Other Half “You have a twenty percent chance of living.” Those words hung in the air. My oncologist had just explained the odds for Keytruda immunotherapy against my stage four cancer. Twenty percent. I sat there doing the math. A twenty percent chance of living meant an … Read more
By Wayne Schlicht – Seeking US-based literary representation. The Story Begins Today I’m sharing something that took more courage to write than anything I’ve ever put on a page. Chapter 1 of my memoir, Still Here: How Faith, Food, and Family Beat Stage Four Cancer, is now available to read in full on this site. … Read more