Once more onto the breach...

Today I flew out to meet with one of my three surgeons who will be operating on me. I've been up since 4am and spent most of today on my feet. I'm dead tired but my insomnia preventing me from sleeping, as it normally does when I'm under high stress.

I've been compiling a list of questions to ask the doctor for several months now. It turns out that I did forget one mid-level question but it went quire smoothly otherwise.

We discussed my concerns then he did a medical exam to see what needed to be done. As it turns out, a fair bit will need to be improved upon. Fortunately, he's one of the top surgeons in North America. He charges quite a bit but you do indeed get what you pay for, which is going to take some fancy footwork on our part to stay on budget.

The thought of going under the knife again fills me dread; I've been very stressed out about this lately, as my sympathetic sister will attest to. This is one of three surgeries soon, all of which I'm stressed out about but for different reasons. For one thing, this operation is considered "elective" surgery.

Is this life-threatening? No. Can I live with it? Now, that question is one which I'd been pondering for nearly a year now and I think the answer is No.

For most of my life, I've been at a disadvantage compared to most other folks around me. I wasn't the firstborn in my family, which immediately relegated me as being as Spare, not the Heir. My birth country had some interesting laws, which puts those like me at a serious disadvantage when it came to commerce and finance - let's leave it at that. Coming to Canada, it took me ages to earn my citizenship so I was barred from quite a few opportunities. Suffice to say that had I been allowed the chance to pursue any one of those career choices, my life would be very different today. Then, there was my Condition. Now, that one was a doozy.

To a certain extent, I think that the disadvantages served to cheese me off enough that I put in a lot more effort than most others, partly to compense and partly because of my competitive streak. So, I'm not really whining here about my life but merely stating some known facts. However, my Condition wasn't something I can put any effort into - the only real choice I had was to seek treatment...or not. Both options carry different but significant costs. It wasn't something I could have done alone. If it hadn't been for the love and support of my family, I don't think I'd have come this far, or even be alive today.

Am I grateful that I what I have today? Let me see...I'm leading a normal life these days insomuch as someone with my background can consider as normal. I'm far happier, I've finally found that I fit society and I have a closer relationship with my family than I've ever had. So I should be fine now, yes?

Umm...not quite. Things still aren't quite right and I need to get it settled and closed. Do I need surgery for this? Yes. Mind you, if I hadn't had the wherewithal to save up enough to get it done, I'd probably have tried to fix things myself with a sterilized scalpel. In fact, it's a good thing I didn't as one of the things that was causing me pain was in fact a permanent suture from a previous surgery. What finally made me realize that this "elective" surgery wasn't exactly elective for me was the very fact that I had contemplated, more than once mind you, performing it myself.

That is most definitively not sane, which worries me significantly. So, I'm going to go through with this and the other two surgeries sometime in the next year or so. In the meantime, I'm going to do some deep soul searching to find out why this matters so much to me although I think I already know: those of you who know me well are also aware of my perfectionist streak which is probably why I'm feeling the way I'm feeling right now.