The worst thing about getting cancer, as many of us who’ve had it will confirm, is the unbearable wait to find out whether you’ve got it. Being told your tumour is malignant is a life-changing moment: but it does at least deliver certainty, and once you have certainty you can move on to a plan. Or at least, you could when I had it. In these coronavirus days, as is increasingly clear from cancer charities such as the Institute of Cancer Research and Breast Cancer Now, it leads not to a plan, but to a new series of agonising unknowns. Is it safe to have the operation you need, given the risks of coronavirus? Are the clinics you need to attend still open? Do the risks of getting coronavirus outweigh the benefits of going ahead with a course of chemotherapy? And this continued uncertainty will have an impact. Prof Clare Turnbull of the Royal Marsden Hospital, where I was treated, said this week that a proportion of people diagnosed with cancer whose treatment is delayed will move from the “cure” to the “non cure” category. In other words, they won’t be in the situation I’m now in, where they’re cancer-free. They will have to go on at best living with cancer; at worst, they’ll die from it. Just as important as the physical toll, though, is the psychological impact. Because, while only a proportion of cancer patients will have their lives shortened by coronavirus, all cancer patients will have their anxiety heightened because of the uncertainty; and that anxiety will impact their lives in the short term, making it harder to cope with having cancer, and potentially leave them with long lasting psychological scars. Within two days of being told I had breast cancer I was meeting doctors who could start to reassure me that there were many treatments available, that I had a range of options, that there were many lines of attack for the type of tumour I had, and that I had every reason to be hopeful. And while it was a long journey to being confident about my health again, looking back I can see that was a turning point. Waiting for the test results I was essentially on my own; now I was surrounded by people who would not only support me but, all importantly, offer me a roadmap through it. It was the first glimmer of hope that I might, possibly, still have a future. I remember my surgeon saying to me, at one consultation, that if I gave her my life for the next few months, she would give me back my lifetime. But she was only able to make me that offer because she had operating theatres and nurses and hospital beds and pathology labs and chemotherapy and radiotherapy clinics running at full capacity. I wonder if she is able to say it as confidently to her patients today. So my heart goes out to those who right now are where I was six years ago. One of the things I realised, through my own experience, is how much cancer is a psychological as well as a physical journey. It takes the ground away from under your feet: nothing will ever be quite the same in your life from now on, and getting your head round that is a big part of getting through. These days, as we all know, treatments are getting better and better, and more people are moving on to live, as I do now, a life that’s entirely cancer free. But part of the reason I can enjoy that life is that I wasn’t left devastated psychologically by one of the most traumatic episodes I’ve ever experienced. Counselling helped me; but what helped even more were those wonderful medics who came armed with action plans and treatment options. Their certainty that they could help me was the beginning of getting back to a life that is entirely healthy, not only physically but emotionally. Every single cancer patient deserves what I had: a confidently delivered strategy to take the necessary steps to restore health. That’s why I believe cancer patients should be as centrestage right now as people with Covid-19. And when we acknowledge the psychological fallout of the pandemic, we need to include its impact on people with cancer. Because, for them, the consequences of additional uncertainty and the fear of delayed treatment will be far-reaching indeed. • Joanna Moorhead writes for the Guardian, mostly about parenting and family life