My Ear is Still Attached

Shortly before Christmas (which was great, but I'll post about that later) I found out that my second waiver request to the Navy was denied. They are super serious about making sure their lawyers can hear a pin dropping on a bed of pillows, because having a lawyer who just understands speech isn't good enough. So I scheduled myself an ear surgery, because when one door closes-but-not-quite-all-the-way I tend to jam my foot in the tiny opening and ram myself against it until it opens or I break something. Half-closed doors bother me intensely.

I purposefully told as few people as possible because I don't especially like people taking care of me. It's a problem I have. There was also no guarantee that it would work, or that even if it did work that it would work well enough for the Navy. Ever since I found out I had a hearing issue in my right ear, though, I have noticed it due to some sort of awareness-bias that I didn't have before, so I also wanted to get this done just so that it would stop annoying me.

Anyway, I showed up at the hospital yesterday at 8AM for my 10AM surgery. Davia and Noah were nice enough to drive me. I forced Kelsey to go to the cabin in the woods New Years celebration with some of our friends because I was not going to let her skip her vacation to take care of me. Everyone at the hospital was very nice, but things were going rather slow. This was probably because they kept confusing me with other Johnsons, as there were three of us there for surgery that day. As good as Georgetown's doctors are, their scheduling and general-awareness department has some room for improvement. After convincing them that I did not need either brain or foot surgery, I found my appropriate loading bay and sat there with an IV in my arm for what seemed like an hour or two.

I met with my anesthesiologist, my anesthesiologist's student apprentice (teaching hospital), my attending surgeon, my attending surgeon's student apprentice, my nurse, my other nurse, my third nurse, and finally my actual doctor. Apparently they had all seen the letter that my doctor had sent to the Navy as part of one of my attempts to get a waiver, and so I had the same conversation with all of them:

Doctor/Nurse: "So they still wouldn't let you in?"

Me: "No."

Doctor/Nurse: "But your hearing isn't actually bad."

Me: "I know."

Doctor/Nurse: "But you would just be doing lawyer things for them."

Me: "... I know."

Doctor/Nurse: "I don't get it."

Me: "I know."

Which is all to say that they were all very sympathetic and on my side and they all wanted this surgery to fix me up. I think that they enjoyed having a patient who wasn't in any pain at all and who didn't have any other problems- allergies, prior surgeries, medical conditions- that would make their jobs more difficult.

Anyway, my doctor knew the deal and promised to attack my ear as conservatively as possible once he figured out what was wrong. There were three options going in:

1. I had otosclerosis (a bone growth in my ear was throwing off my ear bones- very bad)
2. I had ossicular fixation (a bone got stuck somehow - less bad)
3. I had an ossicular discontinuity (two bones weren't touching - also less bad)

They hit my IV with the knockout drugs and I was gone within twenty seconds. Good job, Duke anesthesiologist. I think the last thing I said was "I appreciate that you all are doing this on New Year's Eve," which isn't the worst last thing that one can say before passing out and being in the complete control of a roomful of people with sharp instruments. When I woke up I had some mild pain in my ear, of course, and some soreness in my throat from the breathing tube that they had inserted and then taken out after the surgery.

The first thing that my doctor told me was that he had never seen what he saw in my ear. Ever. This is a guy who was referred to as "overqualified" to perform this surgery by another ENT because he had done more ear operations than you could count. So, you know, not the most comforting thing to hear. What happened was that my stapes and my incus were disconnected because they very top of my stapes had broken off... somehow. We don't understand how I was hearing anything at all beyond the possibility that one heroic fiber stretching between my stapes and incus was holding it all together. This was fixed by cementing my incus and stapes back together, sort of like an arts and crafts project. The great news about this is that the cement is the same composition as my bones and so I have no graft or prosthetic or anything like that in my ear- just extra bone connecting the bones.

I won't know whether or not it worked for another 30 days, and it all depends how the ear heals itself back together since we're dealing with such minor changes in hearing level. If it doesn't work, they can take out my stapes and replace it with titanium, but I would rather they not do that for obvious reasons. Regardless, now I can know that I did everything I possibly could to do the job that I have wanted to do for the past two years, and if it doesn't work out I can walk away from it in peace.

More good news- they were able to get at the problem through my ear canal and didn't have to cut my ear off and then sew it back on (that was an option and yet another reason I didn't tell many people about this). 

After my surgery Noah and Davia came to pick me up and made me soup and helped me fill out my prescription for the fun kind of painkillers that make you feel irrationally invincible. Then they drove me to Josh's, where I had a laid back New Year's Eve with a bunch of people who just let me eat until I got tired, which is exactly what I needed. Then Dan and Christina drove me home. I'm feeling much better today and have stopped taking painkillers for the time being. Yay!