My Therapist Asked Me to Describe What the Waiting Feels Like

And what I described is very similar to how I feel when I am in a depressive episode.

Since the start of this year, I’ve been struggling with medical PTSD — extreme anxiety and flashbacks brought on by a series of events which were eerily similar to the series of events that led to my cancer diagnosis back in 2005.

As I wrote in an Instagram post back in January:

This is as true today — as I head in for a biopsy knowing my increased risk of secondary cancers — as it was when I wrote it in my 2018 essay, “When Being A Cancer Survivor Feels Like A Time Bomb Ticking in Your Ear.”

If you’ve read my most recent essays or Instagram Stories, you know I’ve been struggling these past few weeks with my cancer-survivor health anxiety.

Last month, I noticed a lump on my neck and gave it some time to, hopefully, resolve itself — always trying to walk the fine line between carelessness and hypochondria.

It did not resolve itself.

A couple weeks ago, I reached out to my doctor and was sent for an ultrasound. Some findings would have all but guaranteed a benign issue.

I did not have those findings.