A friend of mine once told me that I will learn patience from being a patient. I have never heard a truer statement. Waiting for biopsy results to tell me whether or not I have skin cancer is a span of time I never expected to go through. I have no idea why it takes a week to get test results back, but at first I thought of that week as torture. Since then, I have gone through that week many times. That week is has been constant in my life for the past eight months.
It may seem surprising, but hearing that it was, in fact, Cancer and that I had to have surgery was not as hard as the waiting. I don’t know if this is because the waiting leaves me free to imagine the worst or if the waiting allows me to hope for the best, but I hope it teaches me to be patient. By being a patient I will learn time and time again that life revolves around the waiting. The waiting is when life happens.
Being a patient means that life has labeled my surroundings unpredictable. It means that my new normal becomes the uncertainty. The test results, procedures, and that slow doctor’s voice that lets me know something is wrong, these are the things I have to become accustomed to; the things I must wait for.
I would love to say that waiting no longer bothers me, but that is not yet the case. I have not yet learned the art of being patient when it matters the most. The problem is that life won’t wait for me but so often requires me to wait. I have always been pretty good at waiting, whether it be attending the Adele concert that I got tickets to a year in advance, or waiting for high school graduation to finally come. However, the waiting while being a patient is of a whole new realm. There is a vulnerability that happens when my health is in question. It means that the very fundamental, biological elements of my being are working against me. Patience provides me with the tools to fight back. Not allowing it to claim the space in my head allows for life to carry on.
The point is that patience will inspire me to move on with my life no matter what news, test results, or procedures I must wait or. I am looking forward to the day when the news does not make me freeze, but instead, I pick up and wait with the knowledge that whatever lies on the other end will not cause me to fall apart. The day I can be patient is the day that being a patient will not define me; it will not take me over.
So, as I learn to tell myself that I am gaining patience while being a patient, no matter how much I wish for different circumstances, I will learn to live my life in the midst of the waiting. There will always be things that I cannot control, but in finding the patience to fight through it, I am sure to find peace. I have no idea how long this might take, or what things will happen in the meantime but I find comfort in the idea that finding patience is possible.
