There’s something nobody warns you about when you have cancer. The minutes, hours, days, weeks you spend waiting.

There’s the two week wait for the biopsy results when you are first diagnosed. The hour minimum wait for the oncologist to call you in. Once you start treatment you wait for your hair to fall out, for the side effects to start, for the steroids to kick in. There’s the day you spend at the chemo unit waiting to see if you will react to the new drug.

Then surgery. You wait for the date. You wait to be called by the surgeon. You wait in recovery. You wait to be allowed tea, to go home, to see your children.

You wait each time they start a new drug to see if it will work. You wait for blood tests, biopsies, ultrasounds. X rays, CT scans, urine tests, appointments, letters, benefits, and on and on.

The times you don’t wait are gratifying and terrifying in equal measure. When they rush you for a scan or hook you up to a drip. But these are rare.

The PET scan is the worst. You wait an hour, filled with radioactive liquid, for the scan to see if your cancer has spread. You’re denied any stimulation so you listen to the tick tock of the clock. Then you lie flat on your back for twenty minutes waiting to be allowed to move. You wait to be allowed to eat. You wait weeks for the phone call with results.

Perhaps the peak waiting experience was my recent A and E visit. After fourteen hours I was admitted to a ward. But still I waited. For tests, for results, for meals, for water, for visitors, for medicine. For a diagnosis.

And now I’m waiting again for another scan. This might determine if I need different treatment or an operation to remove nodules on my lungs. I comfort myself that they can’t be that worried if I’m waiting a month. But who knows?! I’ll have to wait and see.