Lady In Waiting

Hello, dear readers!

There’s been a lot of waiting around of late. COVID-19 has given us the seeming contradiction of an ever-changing world in which nothing much seems to happen. Possibly due to this, or perhaps some strange sympathetic phenomenon riding alongside it. I’ve found similar echoes popping up in real life.

This week has provided some particularly fine examples, and it is upon these I’d like to pour forth.

The Gaming Wait
The first example is a minor and somewhat frivolous one. Being that in this case the waitee is your friendly neighbourhood blogger, this probably shouldn’t come as any surprise. The fact it’s to do with a console game might

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The game in question is called destiny 2. A game set in the far future which features intergalactic warriors traversing a varied range of well realised and graphically spectacular planets, meeting aliens with complex cultures and histories, and, well, shooting them in the face... A lot.

There’s more to it, but you have the crux. It’s a game I get a lot of enjoyment from, despite being the kind of space marine who is more likely to shoot himself in the face and who has been known to fall off an amazing array of broad, flat surfaces. Yesterday Destiny received an expansion!

Yup, new planets to explore. New aliens to be killed by. New stuff to fall off.

The expansion was a pre-planned and much trumpeted arrival I’ve known about for months. And as time dragged on, I became more and more impatient to see the many changes leaked on to the internet. I even took the inadvisable step of staying up waaay past my bedtime to watch a live ‘event’. I won’t bore you with the details, but sleep might have been the more interesting option (if not for the people I watched it with) as, for three hours, not a lot happened. Today, when I finally felt awake enough to play the thing, it was like all my Christmases had come at once. So far, the wait seems worth it.

What Ails Ye
The second, and decidedly more important example of time spent in eager anticipation is my wife, Tina’s continuing struggle with her health. The reason for her abdominal pain, her constant fatigue, the dizzy spells she’s suffering, the decidedly strange blood tests (low vitamin D, low calcium, infection and inflammatory markers), have yet to be explained. Despite five blood tests in four weeks and a barrage of scans at the hospital, no diagnosis has been made. This is understandably frustrating.

Equally frustrating for Tina, is the fact this illness has left her unable to attend a job she genuinely loves (I know, lucky woman). It has left her on a sick note until a diagnosis and then treatment arrives. Essentially, it’s left her stuck in a no-man's-land as she waits for the next round of tests. Pain, poorliness, and frustration wearing her down and wearing her out. It’s not a nice place to be. Especially as Covid cuts off contacts and increases the risk of medical help being harder to access.

As I mentioned, it’s been four weeks since all this started and Tina, the original impatient patient, has found the wait for answers almost unbearable. Hopefully, the nurse will suggest another route to go down. Hopefully, the next tests will provide us with both answers and a nice easy treatment for what ails her. Hopefully, the frustration and worry don’t put her system under even more stress and exacerbate matters further.

Hard Time
Covid has changed life for all of us, leaving many in a strange holding pattern as we wait for the other foot to drop. It has robbed us of close contact with those we love. Led to appointments being cancelled and services being removed. It has led us to a world lived at one remove. A world in which even the sacrifices borne by those who fought for our freedoms seem to have taken a back seat as we fight our own wars. It has increased life’s frustrations. Increased the need for understanding, empathy, and patience. It’s not always that easy, though. As one of my favourite books, Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert E Heinlein, puts it ‘waiting is’. A fact of life. Inescapable.

For those relying on an overworked, under-funded health service, waiting is the cruelest, hardest way to live. Frustration and impatience, as useless as they may be, are natural, understandable, and need to be monitored and managed with sympathy and with empathy. They are emotions that, in lieu of or expectations being met, need to be expressed, accepted, and overcome.

I find shooting aliens in the face works exceptionally well.

Until next time…