I have good news and I have bad news. Let’s start with the good news. Drum roll please…

    I have a surgery date! Hoorah! Yippie! Six months after being diagnosed my insurance company finally gaved and I’m at long last getting the first of many operations I’ll need to save my life! Huzzah! Woohoo! I’ll have a team of four top-notch plastic surgeons operating on me all at once, which will cut the operating time down from the originally planned 8 hours to only 4 hours, meaning I’ll spend less time under anesthesia and they’ll be able to carefully extract more of the deadly diseased fat cells. Wazoo! Bolly-bolly!

    But there’s bad news. And let me tell you, it’s rather sucky (pun intended, maybe.) The surgery date is February 9th, the very day after my 21st birthday. Crap! Dang! See, if the insurance had been nice and I had been able to follow the original surgery plan, I would have been done by now. Shoot! Poo! If insurance companies weren’t such heartless dipwads and I hadn’t been diagnosed with such a bizarre stupid disease, I could have at last had a normal, exciting, wonderful milestone birthday. But nope, this birthday of all birthdays will be spent at the University of Pittsburgh, going through paperwork, meeting with anesthesiologists, and getting ready to have major surgery.

    A few days ago I got to thinking and I realized how much this really does suck, which really wasn’t a good thing to do, but there you go. On my twelfth birthday, I wasn’t doing so well. I was still trying to get over two back-to-back bone debridement operations to try and save my left big toe, and to be quite honest with you, I was a tad bit depressed and suicidal on my birthday. My party was shanghai’d by a “friend” who insisted we watch ‘Annie’ during my slumber party even though I loathe ‘Annie’, I was in a lot of pain, and the whole birthday was a bust. But I told myself it was okay! That milestone birthday didn’t matter, I’d have my 16th to look forward to, all would be well.

    I’d been dreaming of my Sweet 16 since I was three and I happened to visit the local pool one summer on the day one of the lifeguard girls turned 16. She had a massive party, all the other cute, hip teenagers were there, and she had an olympic size cake. It was perfect in that 80’s Saved-By-The-Bell kind of way and it inspired over a decade of day-dreaming about my Sweet Sixteenth. I’ll give you two guesses about what really happened.

    Yup! I was recovering from surgery! Noticing a trend yet? I’d just had one final last ditch effort of an operation to save my left big toe from the five-year-long bone infection. More bone debridements, fusing the joint, giant metal pins sticking out of my toe, and the biggest blizzard Northern Virginia had seen in decades. A far cry from the cute pool party that lifeguard girl had. We tried to pick it up a bit with a Survivor theme, but that didn’t help much. I was miserable, the inside of my toe was cold, and it just didn’t live up to the expectations. But I told myself it was okay! That milestone birthday didn’t matter, I’d have my 21st to look forward to, all would be well.

    It’s funny – funny in a sick, sadistic, ironic way – how time flies yet patterns repeat themselves. I’ll give credit where credit is due, fate has tried to spice things up a bit; at least this time I won’t be recovering from surgery, I’ll be getting ready for it. In Pittsburgh. Yeah, I’m disappointed. This is the last of the Happy Milestones. From here on out the big ta-da birthdays are 30 and 40, and traditionally, those aren’t exactly happy. In fact, the themes usually revolve around the color black. Although it goes with everything, black isn’t exactly cheery, is it? It’s not as exciting and dramatic as 21, it’s not full of optimism and hope.

    I really wanted to be done by now, not just beginning. And I didn’t mean for this blog to turn into a downer, I really didn’t. I was doing so well tonight, cheering myself up. I spent the evening talking with friends who have been very supportive, telling me they’ll officially change my birthdate to any day I choose. Then I spent the evening updating my Amazon wish list with lots of superfluous perfumes. Those never seem to fail when I need cheering up. But here I am again, crying when I should be happy. Or at least contented. I have a surgery date, which I’ve been wishing for since August. Six months of hoping and I finally have it. It just should have happened long ago, so I wouldn’t be where I am now, in pain and mourning the loss of something that was keeping me going for so long.