🎭 Absurd Acts: Performing the Waiting List 🎭

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“God, I Hope I Get It” – I’m Cast at Last

There are moments in life when a single phone call, an email, or a text – a single sentence, redraws the map of your existence – like getting the call you have been cast in that dream role. For me, one of those moments happened November 18 at approximately 1 pm, and it was reading the words: “…we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted as a Liver Transplant candidate and your name has been placed on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) national transplant wait list as of 11/18/2025.”

It’s hard to describe the cascade of emotions that followed. Relief washed over me first – like finally reaching a checkpoint after months of tests, consultations, and the endless paperwork that makes you wonder if “the system” is designed to test your stamina as much as your health. Being “on the list” means I’m no longer wandering in limbo; there’s a path ahead, however uncertain.

But almost instantly, fear crept in. The list isn’t a guarantee – it’s a waiting game, a roulette wheel spun by biology, timing, and fate. I found myself thinking about the paradox: to receive a new liver, someone else must lose theirs. That truth is sobering, humbling, and terrifying all at once.

It feels like standing at the edge of a stage, waiting for the curtain to rise, knowing the script is unwritten, the show unrehearsed, no one has any idea what will happen – I think back to the play, The Actor’s Nightmare.

When you’re placed on the UNOS transplant list, people imagine you’re sitting in some sterile waiting room, flipping through outdated magazines until your name is called. But the truth is weirder than that: there is no room. There’s just life, unfolding as usual, with a new layer of anticipation humming underneath it.

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Living in the Wings

The curtain hasn’t risen yet, but I know it will – it’s imminent. I’m in costume, makeup applied, lines rehearsed. I’m pacing the wings, checking my props, and listening to the muffled murmur of the audience beyond the curtain. The stage manager just whispered, “You’re on the list.” And now I wait for my cue.

Backstage waiting isn’t passive – it’s charged. You’re listening for cues, adjusting your costume, running through lines in your head. That’s what life feels like now. I’m still drinking coffee, sending memes to my daughter, going to work, still listening to Phish jams that stretch longer than most acts of Hamlet. But underneath it all, I’m bracing for the curtain to rise.

And here’s the paradox: the audience doesn’t know when the play will start. And neither do I. The waiting room is really a stage frozen in anticipation.

Fear, relief, gratitude, and guilt all show up at once and collide. The best way I can describe it is: I feel like I’m backstage on opening night of an unwritten, unrehearsed play.

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Fear as a Cast-Mate

Backstage before a show, you’re never alone. Even if the cast has scattered to their corners, there’s always someone pacing beside you. For me now, that someone is Fear.

Fear isn’t a heckler in the audience or a critic with a pen – it’s a fellow actor. It wears the same costume, carries the same script, and whispers the same lines I’ve rehearsed. It’s jittery, restless, always tugging at my sleeve.

When I was placed on the UNOS transplant list, Fear showed up like a cast-mate that didn’t audition for the show. Relief was there too, smiling, patting me on the back, saying, “You’ve made it this far.” But Fear leaned in close and hissed, “What if you miss your cue? What if the curtain rises and you’re not ready?”

“What if the call comes at 3 a.m. and you’re too weak to answer?” “What if the donor match never arrives?” “What if the spotlight blinds you, and you forget your lines?”

Fear is relentless. But here’s the twist: Fear keeps me sharp. It reminds me to stay alert, to keep my phone charged, to rehearse my “lines” of logistics – who to call, what to pack, how to get to the hospital. Fear is the stage manager’s shadow, making sure I don’t drift off into complacency.

I’ve learning not to banish Fear. Instead, I let it pace beside me. I nod at it, acknowledge its lines, and then improvise my own. Fear is loud, but it doesn’t get the final word.

Because when the curtain rises, Fear won’t be the one stepping into the spotlight – I will. And maybe, just maybe, Fear will transform from a nagging cast-mate into applause from the wings – proof that I was awake and alive for the whole performance.

Fear is part of the ensemble.

Relief, gratitude, guilt, hope – they’re all in the cast too. The trick is remembering that I’m the one with the starring role. And all of them, for better or worse, are my scene partners.

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Relief as Permission

When the stage manager finally whispers, “You’re on the list,” it’s not just an announcement – it’s a cue. Relief floods in, not as a sigh of exhaustion, but as permission – permission to stop auditioning, stop proving, stop wondering if I’ll ever make it past the velvet rope.

Relief is the moment the curtain parts just enough to let you glimpse the stage lights. It doesn’t erase the fear pacing beside me, but it softens its edges. It says: “You belong here. You’ve earned your place in this play.”

Relief is not complacency. It’s not sitting back in the wings and waiting for the spotlight to find me. It’s stepping into the present moment with a little more ease, a little more joy, knowing that the path ahead is real – even if it’s unpredictable.

Every day feels like a rehearsal, but relief lets me treat those rehearsals as performances worth savoring. Making dinner, listening to music, writing these words – they’re all acts in the play. The audience may not see them, but they matter.

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Gratitude and Guilt: Two Sides of the Gift

Being on the UNOS transplant list means living with a paradox. My hope for survival is tethered to someone else’s loss. It’s a truth that humbles me every time I think about it. Gratitude and guilt arrive together, hand in hand, like two characters who refuse to leave the stage.

Gratitude and guilt are inseparable. Gratitude reminds me that life is a gift, not a guarantee. Guilt reminds me to hold that gift with reverence, to never take it lightly. Together, they keep me grounded in the reality that this journey is not mine alone – it’s shared with strangers whose generosity and grief will forever shape my story.

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Zen in the Queue (Waiting for Godot Edition)

Being on the UNOS transplant list feels a lot like stepping into Waiting for Godot. You’re in the play, the stage is set, the lines are rehearsed – but the central character you’re waiting for never arrives. The audience leans forward, the actors shuffle, time stretches, and still the silence lingers.

That’s the paradox of this queue: you know something is coming, but you don’t know when – or if it will. Like Vladimir and Estragon, you fill the hours with rituals, jokes, arguments, and small comforts. You wait, but you also live inside the waiting.

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Finding Zen in the Absurdity

What Beckett understood – and what I’m learning – is that waiting isn’t empty. It’s full of gestures, words, rituals, and meaning. The absurdity of waiting for something that may or may not arrive forces you to confront the present moment.

Zen in the queue means embracing the absurdity, not fighting it. It means recognizing that the waiting itself is the play. The curtain has already risen; I’m already performing. The call, when it comes, will be a plot twist, not the beginning.

Like Waiting for Godot, my story is about presence in the pause. Relief, fear, gratitude, guilt – they’re all characters on stage with me. The art of liver maintenance is learning to live fully in the waiting, even when the waiting feels endless.

And when Godot finally arrives – when the phone rings – I’ll be ready. Not because I conquered the waiting, but because I learned to inhabit it.

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Addendum: When the Call Comes (But Not Quite)

The Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, the phone rang. It was Georgetown Transplant Institute. My heart skipped a beat. I called back. A liver had become available – and I was the backup.

Whoa. Big sigh.

Suddenly, the abstract became intimate. The theoretical became visceral. The spotlight didn’t just flicker – it swung toward me, hot and blinding. I wasn’t stepping onstage yet, but I was standing in the wings with my cue almost called.

The flood of emotions was instant and contradictory: Hope surged: Could this be it? Fear clutched tighter: Am I ready? Is this real? Guilt whispered: Someone’s loss is my lifeline. Relief blinked: I’m close. I’m seen.

And then, the moment passed. The lead actor took the stage. I remained in the wings.

But something shifted. The waiting wasn’t theoretical anymore – it had a pulse, a rhythm, a proximity that changed how I breathe. I’m not just rehearsing. I’m listening for the next cue, knowing it could come at any moment. This is real.

The absurdity of Waiting for Godot lives here too: the call may come soon, or it may not. But now I know what it feels like when it almost does. And that knowledge reshapes the waiting – not as emptiness, but as readiness.

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Closing Thought

So, if you’re reading this and walking a similar path, know that it’s okay to feel everything at once. Relief, fear, gratitude, guilt – they’re all part of the human equation. Being “on the list” doesn’t mean the story is over – it means the next act is about to begin – and it may be sooner than you think.