Recovery

2 weeks post-op today! How time flies when you're having fun....Have just deposited sister at airport and am sitting next to the fire while the dog dozes. Perfect time for a blog post! I seem to have been very lucky in my side effects - I really don't have any complaints to make (which is probably why I'm so late with this update). I would however like to have a serious word with the weather; where the heck is the glorious sunshine we normally get in May when I am on nights or revising for exams??? Never been so fed up of sod's law.

On a more positive note, thank you so much to all you lovelies for your kind messages, flowers, cards and presents. I feel very lucky to have such caring and thoughtful people in my life :D 

OK so a round up of my 2 weeks post-op and various side effects:

Pain: was honestly nothing too bad at all. It was mainly inside the ear itself but also around the site of the internal magnet too - this is higher up than I thought, as it's been tunnelled in further up under my hair. (I thought it was somewhere next to the scar in the shaved patch, but no.) I spent a couple of days religiously taking paracetamol and ibuprofen, then dropped the ibuprofen because it gave me gastritis and hampered my wine-drinking. After a week I was only needing paracetamol about once a day, normally to get off to sleep or when waking up. I couldn't sleep on my left side for about a week but as the pain and inner ear fullness dissipated I have managed to get back to my favourite sleeping position, which is bizarrely a left sided recovery position.

Inner ear fullness: has been the most annoying thing - a mild throbbing and feeling of pressure that was there all the time but worse on bending down etc. It's just blood and fluid in the middle/inner ear and it drains away by itself as everything heals. I've read a few horror stories where people have had icky altered blood draining into their mouth through their Eustachian tubes - thank goodness nothing that gross has happened to me (have a v. low gross-out threshold for a doctor, thanks to 4 months of vascular surgery as F1 - has scarred me for life). 

Balance: I have had the odd feeling of being very slightly "off kilter" - this is really hard to describe but some days, I feel like when I nod my head it's nodding curved instead of straight?? Or like my head is moving too far when I move it. OK I sound bonkers. No true vertigo or dizziness though, just a weird off-kilter feeling. Probably due to the fluid described above. 

sticky out Shrek ear

Swelling: was quite alarming initially. For the first couple of days I had swelling around the front of my ear up the side of my face, and my left ear stuck out a mile and also appeared to be slightly lower than the right... I was starting to think I would need another op to have it pinned back! But 2 weeks later it is almost back to its shapely self. I didn't get a photo of the scar when it was at its most swollen - about 3 days post-op. At that point it felt quite throbby and looked a bit angry, but settled down soon enough. 
Being myopic as well, I really appreciated my contact lenses as my glasses weren't very comfy against the swelling.

Numbness: I was warned my ear would be temporarily numb. This is indeed a very odd feeling - it feels quite numb behind my ear and over the top of the pinna. This will get better over the next few weeks to months as the nerves grow back - it's improving already. Everyone has pointed out that now is the perfect time to get a piercing, especially with my undercut, but I am too much of a wimp! Also I think the CI team might kill me if I pierced my implanted ear then got an infection....

Jaw ache: no-one really warned me about this so I did freak out a little at how sore it was! Jeanette (who had her op about 8 weeks before me) said not to worry, hers was sore too but she had actually forgotten about it! I almost forgot to include it in this list, so it really doesn't last that long. Small mouthfuls of squishy food for the first few days helped. I still get the odd twinge so I will put off going to the dentist for a little bit longer....

Tinnitus: not had any. But then fortunately I don't normally get it unless I have a cold. 

me

Jane Fonda

Disgusting hair: going a week without washing was difficult; by the time the end of the week rolled around I was channelling Jane Fonda circa 1980 and had nearly used up all my dry shampoo. I have never been so glad to wash my hair!!! 2 shampoos later I felt human again...



Scar is pretty neat and healing beautifully. I haven't had the guts to give it a good scrub yet, as suggested by the surgeon, but a few stitches are coming out round the sides. My surgeon was very pleased with it at the post-op review; he said the hair was very Mad Max! (alas no subtitled showings yet for Fury Road...) 
I am actually just about to have my hair tidied up and go for a proper undercut - when else will I ever get to do this?!

In other news, I have my switch-on date - 2nd of June! eeeeeek! Not really sure what to expect - except the unexpected! I'm trying to tell myself to relax and just go with the flow, and try not to freak out too much at whatever comes through the processor. I'm worried that I'm secretly expecting to be able to understand voices straight away and then will be disappointed and cry. 

I also have a sheaf of other tuning appointments which I should start putting in the diary actually. 

While I wait for switch-on, I am managing with just one hearing aid in my right ear - much better than I thought I would, but obviously I am pretty good at lipreading my family and closest friends. If I was back at work in A&E/ECU with just one ear I think I would really struggle. It's surprisingly hard to lateralise sound, and I have been finding it harder than usual in loud noisy environments. I've not yet been able to pluck up the courage to put my hearing aid back in my implanted ear - I think I would just freak out if there was no sound at all. (There probably won't be, as most cochlear implant ops destroy what residual hearing you have left. Granted, my residual hearing is pretty shit, but it took a long time for me to let go of it and take the plunge with the op.)

Time to pop to the hairdressers! ta ra darlinks.