11 days ago, I had ear surgery. Things are progressing, although much slower than I’d like. It’s hard to be patient.

For the first few days, I sat around in a drugged stupor. Then there were several days of slowly regaining strength, but tiring quickly.

Yesterday, I worked outside some, but tired very quickly and had to get my son to come help.

The biggest struggle, though, is the hearing. I’m very slowly starting to get hearing back in my right ear. If I had to estimate, I would say I’m now at 25% of pre-surgery hearing levels. Which is an improvement from 0%, but still very discouraging. I can now hear speech without my hearing aid (ie, on the right side), if I’m within a few feet of the speaker and watching their lips.

Meanwhile, the hearing aid refers sound from the left side to the right side. That is, because the BAHA vibrates the mastoid bone, and it’s all connected, I hear those left-side sounds in my right ear. And they are quite jarring, with the added sensitivity on the right. This is calming down, but it’s still difficult to listen to anything even a little loud. And most music is a bit of an auditory assault.

On the other hand, last week, typing was hurting both ears, and today it seems pretty normal, so there’s progress.

One other very weird thing is that everything tastes awful. Fun fact – the main taste nerve runs right through the middle ear. This seems like *terrible* cable management. During surgery, that nerve got jiggled, or bruised, or something, and now my tongue feels like it got a mild shot of Novacaine, and everything tastes metallic. So while I have plenty of appetite, everything tastes off, and it’s a struggle to eat, even my favorites.

Anyways, apparently 3 weeks is the magical date, and I’m half way there. Here’s hoping that the improvements will continue, and accellerate.