Patience

Why is it that a visit back to the hospital where you’ve been a patient for a follow up check is almost as painful as the reason for visiting the hospital in the first place?
Today was one of those days when my wife was due for a visit for a consultation some weeks after she had last visited the particular clinic. In between she had unfortunately had two admissions as a matter of emergency.
But with that behind us, and now recovering, today’s visit should have been a piece of cake.
And that was the way it started out, straightforward, and made our presence known at one of those confusing self check-in screens, and then took a seat as directed in the waiting area, a full 15 minutes before appointment time.
We were rather relieved at the fact there appeared to be only four couples there ahead of us which indicated we could be on our ay before long.
Not a bit of it. Seventy minutes later we were still sitting there. My wife was relatively re-assured by the consultation when we did finally make it, but the frustration of the waiting time had taken the shine off that.
We are patient soles, and can understand that occasionally those before us may over-run on the time allotted for consultations. But, it happens each time we visit and it seems we are never less than an hour sitting in this same waiting area!
But then we shouldn’t be surprised. Our visit to our local surgery the other day for a routine visit to the doctor — which had to be booked a month ahead — also saw us sitting in the surgery waiting room for a full hour!

I would really like to praise the NHS, but . . .