{"id":18286,"date":"2024-12-13T09:04:43","date_gmt":"2024-12-13T10:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=18286"},"modified":"2024-12-13T10:28:57","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T10:28:57","slug":"how-to-stay-calm-while-waiting-for-a-test-result","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=18286","title":{"rendered":"How to Stay Calm While Waiting For a Test Result"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Anxious anticipation is natural, but there are things you can do to ease it.<\/p>\n

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Jancee Dunn is out this week. I\u2019m Maxwell Strachan, an editor on the Well desk, filling in today.<\/em><\/p>\n

A few months ago, my wife and I visited a fertility doctor in hopes of receiving a little help in our attempt to have a child. Midway through an ultrasound, in a way that suggested he was seeing something unusual, the doctor asked my wife if she\u2019d had the scan before.<\/p>\n

It turned out he had found an unidentifiable, large mass in her lower abdomen. Specifically, it looked like it was near one of her ovaries.<\/p>\n

He told us that we needed to schedule an M.R.I., but not to panic. I went against the latter suggestion. In fact, I spent most of my waking hours freaking out. There were many things the mass could have been \u2014 a fibroid or, less likely, a cyst \u2014 but I fixated on worse scenarios.<\/p>\n

Two weeks after the ultrasound, we learned that my wife was fine. She had fibroids, one as large as a grapefruit, but a fixable problem nonetheless. With cancer ruled out, I reflected on how anxious I\u2019d felt, and how I\u2019d been down this road before, when waiting for results from my own medical tests. I wished I\u2019d been better equipped to handle the intervening weeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Waiting for test results is a common, awful part of life. Research has found that it can be as hard or harder<\/a> than receiving an unwelcome diagnosis. That anxious feeling is so common that it has a name, at least in the context of cancer: \u201cscanxiety<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inevitably, I\u2019ll have to wait for another medical test result again one day, as will almost all of us. So I talked to therapists and doctors to find out how I could handle myself better the next time around.<\/p>\n

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Anxious anticipation is natural, but there are things you can do to ease it.Jancee Dunn is out this week. I\u2019m Maxwell Strachan, an editor on the Well desk, filling in today.A few months ago, my wife and I visited a fertility doctor in hopes of receiving a little help in our attempt to have a child. Midway through an ultrasound, in a way that suggested he was seeing something unusual, the doctor asked my wife if she\u2019d had the scan before.It turned out he had found an unidentifiable, large mass in her lower abdomen. Specifically, it looked like it was near one of her ovaries.He told us that we needed to schedule an M.R.I., but not to panic. I went against the latter suggestion. In fact, I spent most of my waking hours freaking out. There were many things the mass could have been \u2014 a fibroid or, less likely, a cyst \u2014 but I fixated on worse scenarios.Two weeks after the ultrasound, we learned that my wife was fine. She had fibroids, one as large as a grapefruit, but a fixable problem nonetheless. With cancer ruled out, I reflected on how anxious I\u2019d felt, and how I\u2019d been down this road before, when waiting for results from my own medical tests. I wished I\u2019d been better equipped to handle the intervening weeks.Waiting for test results is a common, awful part of life. Research has found that it can be as hard or harder than receiving an unwelcome diagnosis. That anxious feeling is so common that it has a name, at least in the context of cancer: \u201cscanxiety.\u201dInevitably, I\u2019ll have to wait for another medical test result again one day, as will almost all of us. So I talked to therapists and doctors to find out how I could handle myself better the next time around.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18288,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18289,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18286\/revisions\/18289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}