This week we confirmed with my wife's doctor some news which I am legitimately ambivalent about. I am also annoyed because when you tell people the news and then explain that you are not 100% thrilled they tell you are an idiot and that this is obviously good news. I shall now beg to differ.

Okay, first the news. My wife had a suspected heart problem (fluid around the heart was mentioned). Now it turns out that all the tests done by the cardiology department show nothing to worry about. Probably. Which is good, obviously. I genuinely don't need anything anybody else to tell me that the heart is very important and that it is good news that there isn't anything wrong with it. What nice, straightforward lives these people lead.

The thing is that if there isn't something wrong with the heart, then there is an explanation for why my wife passed out (repeatedly) and went grey and no bugger knows what it is. It's probably not a cardiac problem, nobody really seems to think it's neurological, but then nobody has gone as far as to rule it out. Basically they don't know. They've ruled out really nasty, which is good, but it leaves us knowing that whatever caused her to pass out and wound herself really quite badly could easily cause her to do the same thing again, with god knows what consequences.

Please understand, I am not blaming the medical professionals. I fear medicine has slightly made a rod for its own collective back these days, in that they know some much that, rather than being impressed by how much they know, people are often annoyed with them for not knowing enough. Good doctors will tell you this, they will have the confidence to accept that there is a limit to their knowledge. Some people will bluff, of course, or try in some other way to avoid admitting that they don't know. But that's not the point, the point is that I don't expect them to have all the answers. It just leaves you in a rather infuriating limbo state.

I had reconciled myself to heart problems, you see. They had been talked of so much that I had pretty taken it as read that there probably was a heart problem, and that it was probably fixable. Armed with my trademark mindless optimism I was happy that we had found the problem, it could be fixed, and everything would be fine. Now, I know that I am being deeply, deeply, naïve in imagining that a heart problem would be quite so straightforward, but it would have been a thing. I would have known what it was and how it could be sorted and I would have felt a little easier for knowing that. Now the problem is still there (or not, whatever it was might have gone away- who can say?) but I have no idea what it is, when or why it might raise its ugly head again and what damage may be done to Raven as a result. It might be there, it might not, it might be major, it might not. Hard to reconcile yourself to that.

If you want to put a positive spin on things (and I do like to try) then that is life for you – unpredictable. It is true that you can be given unpleasant surprises by the curve ball of fate, but just as easily be given good, or even great, news. It's hard not to look on the gloomy side sometimes, whatever Eric Idle says, but every coin has two faces, both of which are equal. Looking at the smiley one is a better plan, on the whole.

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