Living between scans :the waiting that feels endless

The Silence After the diagnosis

There’s a strange kind of time that exists between diagnosis and treatment :not the kind marked by calendars or clocks, but by phone calls, test results, and the sound of your own heartbeat while waiting for news. Everything feels both urgent and suspended, like life is holding its breath.

When I first heard the word cancer, I moved fast. It’s how I cope. I’m a doer by nature, a “give me the next step and I’ll run with it” kind of person. So I did. I lined up tests, chased appointments, and refused to let paperwork or scheduling delays stretch the space between questions and answers. On paper, my “in between” lasted about four weeks. In reality, it felt endless.

The Paradox of Feeling ‘Lucky’

The paradox of those days still lingers. All my results pointed to what doctors call “the lucky spectrum of cancer” - if such a thing exists. The tumor was small, the margins clear, the plan straightforward: surgery and radiation. No mastectomy, no chemo.

People around me, trying to comfort, would say things like, “That’s the best kind you can have” or “At least it’s just that.” I understood what they meant, I even repeated those words to myself. But every time I heard “only,” it collided with the reality that this was still cancer. There’s no “just” when it’s happening to your body.

The Endless Loop of Waiting

That’s the thing about waiting , it magnifies everything. The smallest worry becomes loud in the quiet hours. I’d be fine one moment, answering emails, grocery shopping, keeping things moving, and then suddenly my mind would spiral: What if they missed something? What if it’s worse than it looks? What if “lucky” changes overnight?

On the outside, no one could tell. I kept functioning, kept smiling, kept moving. That’s what I know how to do. But inside, it was a different story:an internal tug-of-war between logic and fear, gratitude and disbelief. I’d repeat the facts like a mantra: small tumor, early stage, treatable. Yet my body didn’t always believe my mind.

Small Anchors in the Sea of Uncertainty

Time in those weeks moved in odd shapes. Some days vanished in a blur of appointments and results; others dragged like slow motion. I’d count the hours until the next call, the next step, the next sign that something was progressing. Between scans, it wasn’t just the medical waiting that wore on me , it was the emotional one. The space between knowing something is wrong and trusting that it will be made right again.

I tried to fill that space with small acts of control: the things that reminded me I still had a say in something. I reverted to routines that grounded me: organizing a drawer, prepping meals, and most often, baking sourdough. The rhythm of feeding the starter, waiting for it to rise, and shaping each loaf gave me a sense of order when everything else felt uncertain. It wasn’t about distraction; it was about building small anchors in a sea of unpredictability. Each task, however ordinary, became a quiet form of self-preservation.

Reclaiming Motion

Looking back now, ten days post-op, I can finally breathe a little deeper. The surgery went well. The pathology matched the plan. There’s still radiation ahead, still healing to do, but the waiting that once felt endless has been replaced by motion again, the kind that moves toward recovery, not just through uncertainty.

And here’s what I’ve learned about luck: it’s complicated. It doesn’t erase fear or exhaustion, and it doesn’t make your story smaller. It just gives it a different shape, one that holds both gratitude and grief at the same time.

Maybe living between scans taught me that. That you can be strong and scared, efficient and fragile, grateful and angry, all in the same breath. And that sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do in the waiting is to keep living , even quietly, even imperfectly, while your body and your future catch up to you.

The waiting didn’t heal me. But it taught me how to exist inside uncertainty without letting it consume me. And that, in its own quiet way, feels like progress.

Author’s Note

Ten days post-surgery, I’m writing this from the gentler side of the waiting :where the noise has settled but the lessons still echo. This piece follows “The Dreaded Call” and “Shock, Denial, and the Strange Normal of the First Days After Diagnosis”, continuing my attempt to give shape and language to what so often goes unspoken: the quiet spaces of fear, hope, and resilience that live between milestones.