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 dark writing this to you. The house is too quiet. My wife and our oldest son are in Tennessee right now, helping her mom recover from hip replacement surgery. So it’s just me tonight.
Outside, it’s that deep kind of dark that only exists when the whole world has gone still and you haven’t.
My shirt is drenched. I woke up soaked again, the way I do sometimes, and instead of fighting my way back to sleep, I decided to talk to you.
Because you deserve to know what this feels like.
In about six hours, I’ll walk into a clinic alone. They’ll draw my blood for labs, I’ll lie down on a cold table, hold my breath when they tell me to, and let a machine take pictures of what’s happening inside my body.
And then I’ll wait.
Not in a waiting room. Not with a doctor walking toward me.
I’ll wait for my phone to buzz. I’ll wait for the portal to update. I’ll stare at a screen the way you stare at a pregnancy test, except instead of two lines, I’m looking for words like “stable” or “no evidence of disease,” praying I don’t see “progression.”
That’s how you find out if you’re dying now.
On your phone. Alone.
What Scanxiety Really Feels Like
Three months. That’s how long it’s been since my last scan.
And I wish I could tell you I was perfect for all ninety of those days.
I wasn’t.
I stopped taking fenbendazole. I reduced my high dose vitamin C infusions at The DRIPBaR. I got busy. I got tired. I had some carbs. I had a few desserts. I missed workouts.
I’m human. And some days being human and having cancer at the same time is more than one person can carry perfectly.
Now, at 2 AM, every single one of those choices is sitting in the dark with me.
Every skipped infusion. Every slice of something I shouldn’t have eaten. Every morning I didn’t make it to the gym.
They’re all here, whispering the same thing: what if that’s the thing that shows up on the scan?
That’s scanxiety.
It’s not just fear of bad news. It’s a courtroom in your own head where you’re the defendant, the prosecutor, and the jury, and every imperfect choice you made gets entered as evidence.
Living Between Scans
People think the hardest part of cancer is the treatment.
The needles. The infusions. The side effects.
And yes, all of that is hard.
But the hardest part is what happens between scans.
It’s the three months of living in a body you don’t fully trust anymore.
You wake up with a new ache and your first thought isn’t “I slept wrong,” it’s “is it back?”
You feel a twinge and you don’t reach for ibuprofen, you reach for your phone to search what organ is on that side.
You laugh with your family, and somewhere underneath the laughter there’s a voice that says, remember this, just in case.
You learn to carry joy and terror in the same hand.
And you get good at it.
So good that people look at you and say, “You’re so strong.”
And you smile.
Because what else are you going to do?
Fear, Faith, and Being Honest at 2 AM
I’m scared.
I believe God is good. But at 2 AM, I’m still scared.
I’m scared of the results. I’m scared of what happens to my wife if they’re bad. I’m scared of what happens to my family.
I’m scared that the desserts mattered. That the skipped infusions mattered. That I wasn’t disciplined enough, strong enough, faithful enough.
At 2 AM, imperfect feels like failure.
But I’ve learned something.
There’s a difference between being afraid and being broken.
Fear is just your body reminding you that you have something worth losing.
And I have so much worth losing.
Why I’m Still Fighting
When I was first diagnosed, a doctor gave me a timeline.
I’ve outlived it.
I stopped counting months and started counting milestones instead.
Holidays with my family. Mornings with coffee. Sunsets I wasn’t supposed to see.
I’m a project manager. I’m a provider. I fix things.
I’m not supposed to be the guy who can’t work, who’s on disability, who needs help.
Some days that feels heavier than the cancer.
But then I remember something.
Every person who has shown up for me didn’t do it because I was perfect.
They did it because they believe my life is worth fighting for.
And I’m starting to believe that too.
If you’re walking through cancer or waiting on results, you’re not alone.
If something in this moved you, share it, say a prayer, or leave a comment. I read every one.
I’ll update you when I get my results.
Until then, I’m going to sit here a little longer in the quiet. I’m going to breathe. I’m going to remind myself that I’ve been in this darkness before.
And every single time, the sun came up.
Every single time, I was still here.
And I plan to keep it that way.
With all my love and gratitude,
Wayne