Jancee Dunn is out this week. I’m 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’d 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 — a fibroid or, less likely, a cyst — 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’d felt, and how I’d been down this road before, when waiting for results from my own medical tests. I wished I’d 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: “scanxiety.”
Inevitably, I’ll 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.
Stop binge-watching “Friends.”
Simply trying to zone out is particularly ineffective when you’re waiting for significant news, said Kate Sweeny, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, who studies the difficulty of waiting. So as much as the TV might call out to you when you’re desperate to be distracted, it’s probably not going to help.
“Spacing out, listening to music, just trying to relax — those sorts of things are tough,” Dr. Sweeny said. “If they work for you, great. But I would say that for many of us, our minds are perfectly capable of loudly worrying while watching television, while we’re listening to music, while we’re driving the car.”
Instead, try playing with your dog.
Think about what brings you into the moment. Maybe it’s exercising vigorously, wrestling with your dog or reading a great book. Activities that draw you in and serve as an engaging distraction are among the most successful ways to deal with the anxiety of waiting, experts said.
These are sometimes called flow activities, but you could also think of them as “focused-attention tasks,” said Shawna Ehlers, a psychology professor at the Mayo Clinic who studies the psychological and emotional effects of cancer. What works will vary by person — a crossword puzzle, perhaps? — but the key is to get in the zone.
No really, get off Google.
You’ve heard this one before, but therapists and doctors alike said that searching for answers online was more likely to add stress than to reduce it. Even Dr. Mikkael A. Sekeres, the chief of hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center in Miami, tries to avoid doing internet searches when waiting for his own test results. Dr. Sekeres said he knew the limits of his own knowledge and was happy to wait for his own doctor to talk to him.
“I don’t want to pretend that I specialize in an area that I don’t,” he said.
Make an action plan with your doctor.
Once your doctor orders a test, tell them you want to put a plan in place, suggested Dr. Ashwini Nadkarni, a psychiatrist at Mass General Brigham and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Get specific. Ask why the test is being ordered, how and when you’ll receive the results and what they might look like. This way, you’ll know exactly what to expect and be better prepared for whatever comes your way.
Dr. Sekeres also suggested creating “boundaries of possible outcomes” by asking for best- and worst-case scenarios.
Don’t feel bad if nothing works.
About a decade ago, Dr. Sweeny and her team analyzed whether 230 law school graduates could use coping mechanisms to ease their stress while waiting for the results of the California bar exam. By and large, the answer was not really — and sometimes trying seemed to backfire, she said.
This wasn’t exactly a surprise to Dr. Sweeny. Even the most successful coping strategies can and often do fail, including for her.
But there may be a silver lining for the worriers among us. In the law school experiment, Dr. Sweeny’s team found that the people who worried the most dealt with the results the best.
If the news was good, the relief was enormous. And if it was bad, well, they were ready for it.
Brush up on taking care of your teeth.
Brushing your teeth may seem simple, but dentists say there are common mistakes people often make. They offered six tips to keep teeth and gums clean and healthy.
Read the article: Think You Know How to Brush Your Teeth?
Make the most of cold weather.
It can be hard to will yourself to be active outside when it’s dark and cold. This may explain why Americans are less active during the winter months. Experts have ways to make outdoor workouts more bearable this time of year.
Read the article: Winter Workout Tips, From Scientists Who Study Extreme Cold
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