The Ear Chronicles

Phil is home and well-pieced together! I'll be updating with pictures of the progress and anything funny he does while on major doses of Vallium. He was the perfect hospital patient, charming the nurses with his wit, scooting around in his open-backed gown and booties, and deciding that he likes the headband because, well, you know: karate kid. He had a tympanoplasty (gross picture here, nice drawing here) and mastoidectomy all because of a goddam cholesteatoma. The surgery was actually much more time-consuming and scary than they had originally thought. The cholesteatoma was very advanced and mandated the removal of portions of his ear canal, his hearing bones, and huge portions of his mastoid. Most importantly, they found that part of his brain was slowly collapsing into his ear cavity and a wall had to be erected and reinforced in order to keep his brain in the right spot (!!! here is where the wife starts loosing it!!!). I have pictures of all of this (did you know they totally bring you pictures of your spouse's insides afterwards?!) and I'll post them tomorrow. He got himself a new eardrum stretched (yes, they can do that) and faux hearing bones put in for the time being. Luckily, his surgeon is a badass lady who just returned from maternity leave to continue her cholesteatoma-ass-kicking job. She was very cool and calm as she told me about the amazing wandering brain and the fact that we won't be able to have sex for 6 weeks (I'm not even kidding, so don't laugh: it's not funny).
Here is Phil home from the hospital thinking about 6 weeks without sexual activity of any kind:

This is what his ear looks like. I've mentioned it once to him, but I'm not sure he realizes just how crooked his ears are now, in relation to one another, I mean. More pics to come.
This is what happens when he's left alone for an hour. They say THIS IS NORMAL so don't accuse me of bad caretaking just yet:
I asked Phil if he wanted me to tell anyone anything and since he can't really talk right now he just waved, so "Hi!" from Phil. He's doing ok at the moment, but I'll post all the gorey details as time passes...I mean, can you even WAIT to see all the packing that has to come out in 3 weeks?!? I can't.