When I first opened my eyes, I looked around and saw several women walking around in blue scrubs. Things were a bit blurry because I didn’t have my glasses on. One of the women in blue approach me. I asked her if I was alive. She laughed and told me that I was in the post-operative recovery room. “Oh good,” I said.

I survived my surgery. And the good news is that the surgeon didn’t have to drill a hole in my skull. He was able to remove that nasty mass in my middle ear through my ear canal. Yay!

But the bad news is that it was, indeed, a nasty mass and apparently it feasted upon at least one of the tiny bones in my middle ear, meaning that my hearing in that ear won’t be restored unless I have another operation to insert a prosthetic bone (or bones) in my middle ear, and that can’t happen for at least another six months. That’s disappointing.

Meanwhile my ear canal is filled with cotton and other materials and is all bandaged up. I still can’t hear out of that ear, it still feels congested, an my tinnitus (ringing) in that ear is even louder than it was before the surgery. But hey, I am alive, right?

It will probably take me a few more days before I am fully recovered and can get back into the swing of things with respect to my blog (and my life). But I do want to take a moment to thank you all for your well wishes and, while it’s definitely going to be a quiet and tame New Year’s Eve for me, I hope you will have a very nice night tonight ringing out 2019 and ringing in 2020.