Last night was an enormous breakthrough. I slept on my right side.

My entire life I’ve been a right sider in all things, including sleeping. I don’t have a “side of the bed” preference, except that I like to be the furthest away from the door… unless there’s a window which really makes things confusing… it’s hard to explain. Anyway, I have always preferred sleeping on my right side. That is, until they cut my ear off.

Last year part of my diagnosis and then treatment plan involved analyzing my body for any possible foreign entities that could later turn into really terrible things… like cancer. MS treatments are all essentially the same: repress certain cells in the immune system. So in theory, you really want to eliminate all things in the body that you might later need those cells to fight.

7 weeks and 2 surgeries later, I woke up and realized a surgeon had cut most of my ear off and then sewed it back on. Why I wasn’t aware of or expecting this event is an entirely other story for another post. Most importantly, my ear was fully intact again but covered in stitches and, as you would well imagine, all of the feeling was gone.

When you can’t feel your ear, you don’t want to touch it and you don’t want anyone else touching it and you certainly don’t want foreign objects touching it and you most definitely don’t want to lay on it. There is a frozen numb feeling where sensations used to be and that just doesn’t feel so great.

7 months and 2 weeks later, I have about 90% feeling back in my ear.

Last night, I was able to sleep on my right side again.

Hallelujah and thank you. I love the absurdity and beauty of it all.

Remember, it’s always the little things.