“I heard the term scanxiety from one of my cancer buddies,” recalls Lila Margulies, a Brooklyn, New York–based mother of two, who was undergoing treatment for lung cancer. “I was just getting really anxious about an upcoming scan and she said something like, ‘Oh, that’s scanxiety.’” It was nice, Margulies thought, that there was a name for that fear, but at the same time, the word struck her as slightly odd. “It felt funny to me that there was a silly-sounding word for something that was so horrifyingly terrifying,” she says. Even so, she adds, “I identified very well with it because it’s such a specific type of anxiety about the scan, which is different from anxiety about lots of other aspects to the cancer and also to anxiety in general.” A big reason for this scanxiety, according to the article in Cancer Medicine, is that people with cancer are undergoing more scans than they used to in the past. This is partly because improvements in cancer treatments — and the better understanding that doctors have of cancer in general — have led to improved survival rates. But the article also noted that, because studies show a link between scan‐associated distress and a significant reduction in a person’s quality of life, there’s a need to ease cancer patients’ stress. One way to do that is by reducing the time someone gets a scan and receives test results. In fact, according to an article published in August 2021 in the journal Supportive Care in Cancer, which surveyed 222 patients with breast, lung, and colorectal cancer, scanxiety is not only common but can also be severe. “This anxiety or distress associated with getting scans or waiting for results can range from mild nervousness to almost a debilitating type of fear that really affects [a person’s] quality of life,” says David Mendoza, a nurse practitioner at the NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center in New York City. Margulies, for her part, would often experience pain about a week before getting a scan — pain that, she says, was exacerbated by stress. “Maybe my back hurt from sleeping on it a certain way or something else, but I would attach meaning to it — ‘Oh, there must be cancer in that part of my body,’” she says. To cope with this anxiety, Margulies tried not to focus on the fact that her scan results might be bad. “The fear of, ‘What if the scan is bad?’ can hold a lot of power,” she says. But, she says, “Maybe it won’t be bad; maybe it’ll be good.” This interview took place in February 2019.
