getting there

Yesterday was exactly two weeks from surgery.  The incision is healing and the sutures are beginning to dissolve.  The pain is almost incidental now, not at all sharp and so sporadic that it really doesn't matter anymore.

I'm still very aware of the implant in my head, but I suspect that will take a little longer.  

I've just realized what an act of trust this surgery was on my part.  I really didn't research it much - I was focusing on the devices for the most part, because I had to choose between them.  It never occurred to me to look into what the surgery involved, or to do anything other than to trust Dr. H - and that trust has certainly been justified.

But what a surgery it is.  I found implantation videos online, and I found the instructional booklet that the device manufacturer sends with each kit.  I was blithely assuming that the kits were just the devices, the implant and the processors and all the little bits and bobs, but there are tools and fixturing and gauges and I don't know what all that are all shipped with the implant to support and enable successful surgery.  It's fascinating, it's incredibly exact, and it's much more involved than I imagined.

A little  - call it a nest for lack of a better word, for the implant is drilled into the skull.  There's a plastic thing that's exactly the shape of the implant so they can test the dremeled out hole for size.   There's even a fixture to help the surgeon drill the holes for the pins that hold the implant in place.  It's astounding.  

And all along I thought the cool part was the way the electrode array is wound into the coils of the cochlea.  And, really, it is fascinating.  But I had no idea of the complexity of what they were doing in my head that day two weeks ago.  I suppose if I'd given it more thought I'd have realized that the placement is critical and this is really about the only way you could accomplish that.  I've worked in the medical device industry long enough, and seen enough implantation videos for other devices, that I knew it wasn't going to be simple or easy.  

And yet I am marveling at what Dr H did.  The surgery was complex and very technical in execution, and yet it was only a couple of hours and it was done on an outpatient basis.  I was at the surgery center for five hours total.

This is one of those times when I'm grateful to be living now, when these options are available.  Even fifty years ago I'd have been disabled and probably not working.  I am lucky to have had this chance, and to live when it's possible.  

Science, peeps, is a wonderful thing.

Still waiting  impatiently for activation.  A week from next Wednesday!