recovering from surgery

Today is Monday, March 2. My surgery on Friday went pretty well, from what I can tell. Friday I spent in a room in the ICU, and then they transferred me to a post-surgery hospital room for Saturday night. Sunday, they discharged me and Beth brought me back to our hotel in Covington. This morning, we took the post-surgical dressings off, and now I have the first of a few days at the hotel resting and healing.

Dr. Gianoli told me that once he got into my head, things weren’t quite like he originally thought. There was not a portion of the brain punching through the skull and impinging on my malleus bone. Instead, my malleus was so high up that was touching the brain. Minor difference, I guess, but relevant. It wasn’t the brain that was “off sides”; it was the middle ear.

Anyhow, he built up a little dome over the malleus to give the bones room to do their job and for the brain to rest on. And while he was in there, he also did some extra patching of the original left side superior canal repair from November 2013.

Current symptoms: The sound of my voice is very loud in the left ear, and there is loud ringing there, and I can hear my pulse pretty loud. These are all expected, though, and are normal for the first days or weeks after this surgery. So I’m not at all concerned. I guess I’m used to the idea that we won’t really know for weeks or months later whether the surgery was a full success.

Here’s a little selfie gallery of photos over the past few days.