Directly after the surgery I lost my hearing, voice, and ability to swallow properly. My voice and swallowing were a direct result of the surgery as those functions are controlled by the cranial nerves that were involved in the surgery (i.e. directly manipulated).
My voice is back to about 80-85% normal, is very weak and hoarse. Improvements at this point are incremental and hard for me to notice. I think it's plateaued, but it may be improving and I don't notice. Some days it's quite good, other days quite hoarse.
Swallowing difficulty was a surprise. Specifically, I lost control of the muscles in the left side of my throat, and I lost soft-palette control. The function of the soft palette is to close off your nasal passages from your throat when you swallow. The net result is that when I swallow, food and drink go up into my sinuses instead of down my throat. Loss of muscle control in my throat means that food (primarily) would make it down to about where my windpipe starts and gets stuck. To correct this problem I had to take a sip of something with every swallow.
As for hearing, this was a total surprise. There is generally less than a 2% chance of this occurring with the procedure I had. I guess someone has to represent that lousy 2%. My surgery was scheduled for 7:30-10:15. When I woke up, the first thing I saw was a clock that said 2:15 and I knew right away that something went wrong. Almost immediately after waking and having that thought go through my mind, a nurse explained to me that I had probably lost hearing in my left ear. She was right, I did. I couldn't hear anything out of that ear. The neurosurgeon said this 100% hearing loss was permanent. This was a bummer.
For the week that I was in the hospital, I had serious doubts about having opted for surgery. Couldn't swallow (eat/drink), couldn't speak, couldn't hear... The surgeon asking me if my neuralgia pain was gone was kind of like asking Lincoln's wife how she enjoyed the play! (He actually said that, too!)
About two weeks after the surgery I put a phone to my ear and could hear a dial tone! Since that time I've regained perhaps 30% of hearing in that ear. This is cool! And a surprise, to my neurosurgeon too. I can hear a normal conversation, although it's quite muffled. Crowds or environments where there is a lot of background noise are difficult to tolerate as I have a hard time picking out a single voice.
Beyond all that, I think I have made the correct decision. The pain Iwas tolerating was, well, intolerable!
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