Etymology is always right (and so am I).
Being sick means having to undergo a whole series of tests, going here and there for various appointments, each involving waiting time and having to answer the same questions over and over again. In short, you revisit your knowledge of French and rediscover that it does indeed take a lot of patience to be a patient. It sounds obvious, but experiencing it makes you feel this etymological revelation. Applied etymology, in a way...
And you realize that patience can be learned, or at least that you can improve your skills in this area. First, you organize yourself so that you are always able to communicate, work, and keep yourself busy: smartphone (for example, I am writing this on my phone in a waiting room), computer, books. Then you learn to strike a delicate balance between creating a bubble in which you can isolate yourself and staying alert so you don't miss your number being displayed, your name being called, or any other external signal. This way, you avoid being disturbed by the conversation next to you, various announcements, or the crowded waiting room.
The big challenge remains: accepting and managing the wait. Waiting for 30 minutes is not the same as waiting for 12 hours straight. There are several levels: less than an hour is easy/beginner level; two to three hours, intermediate level; three to six hours, advanced level; and more than six hours... that's too much.
And then there is the long wait, the one that lasts all night, punctuated by various movements, from the reception waiting room to the examination room, from the X-ray room to the indoor waiting room, and various information gathering, verbal, blood pressure, blood tests, etc. This one has to be managed like a sleepless night at a friend's house. Here, too, you can allow yourself moments of “drowsiness,” on your bag, on the wheeled bed while waiting for the nurse or doctor, in the blood test chair, or you can listen to what's going on around you and see how people react. Generally speaking, you don't talk much to other patients. Conversations are fairly short and often focus on practical matters: “Do you have a charger for my phone?”, “Can I borrow that chair?”, “Where did you get that coffee?” No one wants to tell their whole story, and no one needs to hear about the misfortune and pain that others don't want to share anyway. It's a kind of implicit status quo, at least that's how I experienced it, having never met anyone who felt the urge to go into detail about their illness in front of ten strangers. Plus, when you're pretty much a normal person, going through an illness makes you humble: you don't go into details about how you hold your tennis racket, your backswing, your lob, or your smash to Federer, Nadal, or Djokovic... Well, it's the same thing here.
I almost said “same without TV,” but actually, yes! TV is everywhere. In Cochin, it's either BFM (french 24/7 news channel) or Channel 2. That's how I found out I had Covid, after two hours of torture watching a Marc Lavoine special, a crappy fake concert with mollusk-like reworked versions of his songs, not to mention how old the guy looks now. To top it all off, the guests, each one more useless than the last, seemed to have the amazing talent of just having the same manager or record label as him. Well, I'll tell you what, ma'am: finding out you've ONLY got Covid in this kind of context is nothing but happiness!
