Thursday, September 17, 2009

Got Another Date...

...and another new vocabulary word:

tympanoplasty (tim-PAN-o-plass-tee) - reconstructive surgery of the eardrum.

On November 3rd -- exactly one week after my next MRI -- the right side of my head goes under the knife again. But this time my skull remains intact. The surgeon will take grafting tissue from either the tragus (more vocabulary -- this is the little pointy part of your ear that holds earbuds in place) or somewhere else around my ear and make a new eardrum to replace the one that was damaged by radiation.

Four days later, I am scheduled to sing at a Families Supporting Adoption conference. My right ear will be completely packed with dissolvable stuff on both sides of the new eardrum, so I'm hoping the piano will be to my left. And if there is another Messiah performance this Christmas, I should have better hearing by then.

Considering how gruesome the informed consent process was for each of my cancer treatments, I think it's pretty awesome that this eardrum thing is the worst complication that I've had.

No comments: