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AFTER CANCER: MINIMIZING CHECKUP ANXIETY
The best cure for checkup anxiety is a series of normal checkups. Until that time, you can minimize checkup anxiety with some practiced attitudes and habits:
•Treat checkups as just one more necessary part of your life, like getting gas for your car or locking all the doors and windows before you leave your house.
• See checkups as an opportunity to confirm that you are doing well. You will feel great after you find out that your tests look good.
•Plan a special treat for yourself for soon after your checkup. Whenever you start to feel anxious, visualize yourself enjoying your special treat in the same way that you anticipate other planned, special happy events.
•After each checkup, fulfill the planned special treat. Reinforce the experience of good checkups. Make checkups something to look forward to, something associated with great memories.
One young mother who had intensive chemotherapy used to go to a department store after each treatment to buy something special. “Doesn’t treatment mean you are meant (ment) for a treat?” she asks. She jokes with her friends that she is still paying off her medical and her department store bills from her treatments. She continues to do something special after each checkup and to joke about her department store bills. It can be an inexpensive treat, or just taking time to do or see something special. The key is a special reward to turn checkups into a celebration.
• See checkups as your opportunity to stay well. If you should develop a problem such as anemia, a recurrent cancer, a new cancer, or a heart problem, regular checkups will maximize the chance that your problem will be picked up early, when it is most easily curable and has the least impact on your life.
• Remind yourself that if your checkup is going to reveal a problem, you want to know it. If you should develop a problem, you will have it whether you go for your checkup or not. Avoiding your checkups just delays when it is picked up and may decrease your chance for some treatment options or even a cure.
You may play mind games while waiting for your checkup. Should you hope that everything is perfect? Should you plan on it? Are you confident that all is well, or do you have doubts? Should you picture your doctor calling you to say that all of your test results are great and not allow yourself to indulge in negative fantasies? Or should you make plans for good news or bad news?
There is no one right way to play the waiting game. Some approaches work well for some people and not for others. The same approach may work well for you one time and not another. In general, try to find the way that requires the least energy to bring you the most comfort.
You may feel best assuming that everything will be perfect and not letting yourself entertain for a minute any other possibility. You may prefer planning for every contingency, going through all possible outcomes in your mind and working through a plan of action for each. You may find it easiest to prepare for bad news, just like some smart people who go into every test saying, ‘I’m going to fail,” before they ace it. Or you may be able to put it out of your mind entirely until you go.
Checkups offer opportunities to confirm that you are doing well, to stay well, and to celebrate your life.
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