Dr Punam Krishan has spoken about the ‘aftermath’ of suffering from cancer
A GP has highlighted a side-effect of cancer that she says ‘nobody tells you about’. Macmillan Cancer Support estimates that around 3.5 million people in the UK are living with cancer.
This equates to one person being diagnosed every 75 seconds in the country, and 168,000 individuals dying from it each year – that’s 460 people daily. The combination of an ageing population, improved diagnostics and increased public awareness means the number of recorded cases is expected to rise annually.
Dr Punam Krishan is one of these individuals. The Glasgow-based GP, known for her appearances on daytime television and informative posts on social media, revealed in January 2026 that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Thankfully, her recovery is going well. However, after seeing a patient at her practice, she was reminded of something she believes all cancer patients should be aware of.
She stated: “I wanted to share something with you, something that nobody really tells you about cancer. And something that I realised I shared in common with a patient today and it’s the bit that comes after. It’s the health anxiety, which is a whole new kind of anxiety by the way.
“Now as most of you know, I’ve not long finished treatment for breast cancer myself and I am still very much healing, still taking it day by day. And physically, I’m getting there but mentally it’s been a very different kind of healing. I mean, even just yesterday to give you an example, I was in the car and I felt a wee pain in my arm and within minutes my mind had spiralled to, ‘what if it’s back?’ and I found myself calling my husband and then my mum and my best friend just needing that bit of reassurance.
“And then I had to really, really catch myself, take a breath, slow the heck down and go back to the little mantras that I have learned and the tools that my therapist has given me over this time just to bring myself back to the present moment, control the controllables and the pain settled within a few minutes. It was nothing serious but that feeling, that jump from zero to a hundred, anyone that knows and has been there, it is so real. And in medicine, of course, we call this health anxiety, where your brain becomes hyper-alert to every single sensation and it starts to scan for danger.
“But after something serious like cancer, everything feels different. And I sometimes think of it as an aftermath anxiety. Honestly, it feels like the mother of all anxieties because your brain isn’t imagining danger, it’s remembering it and your body has been through something so real and your mind is just trying to protect you. Just sometimes it overdoes it.
“So today then, in clinic, I saw this clearly again in front of me, a patient who has also had cancer and she was telling me she just can’t switch off the worry sometimes. She’s barely sleeping some days, her mind keeps going back to, ‘what if it’s still there?’ and she said that she almost felt like I wouldn’t understand and was worried about sharing this because people around her keep telling her, ‘oh, it’s nothing’.
“But sitting here with her I was thinking, ‘I see you, I get it, because I’m in that space too’ and I shared that with her and it’s not nothing. This is a real and valid feeling and it just made me realise how little we talk about this part. The fear of recurrence, the hyper-vigilance, that loss of trust in your own body. And we’re not really taught it, not as patients and if I’m really honest, not even as doctors. I wasn’t taught this. I sadly had to learn this by living through it.
“So if you’ve ever felt that shift from calm to panic or find yourself checking, worrying, needing reassurance, you are not imagining it and you are not over-reacting. Your mind, it is responding to something that your body has genuinely been through and I don’t think that that just switches off overnight.
“Oh my goodness, I wish it did, but with time, with support and a lot of self-compassion, it should start to soften as you begin to find your new normal. So if you are in this space just now, just know that you are not alone. And if you are supporting someone more importantly that is going through this, please don’t minimise what they are feeling. Give them a big hug, give them the space to share. This is part of their healing journey as well.”
Why are cancer cases increasing?
Cancer cases are on the rise – and projections suggest this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. An ageing population combined with improved diagnostics and greater public awareness partly explains this – but additional factors are also at play.
Firstly, the UK’s population is growing, which means there are more individuals who can develop the disease. While older people remain more vulnerable to cancer, certain types are appearing in growing numbers of younger people – particularly bowel cancer.
Advances in cancer treatment mean more people are surviving the disease. The number of individuals living with cancer in the UK has risen from nearly 3 million in 2020 to almost 3.5 million in 2025.
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