Blair's "eight or nine" in the third grade when she has to go in for surgery. Throughout her life, she's had recurrent swimmer's ear, ear infections that never completely go away. By the time she's eight (or nine) she's developed a otosomethintoma that "wasn't cancer," she points out almost immediately, "Just this...growth that keeps growing in your ear."
Eventually, she has to go in for surgery to get the dang thing excised and biopsied. She doesn't remember if she ended up staying in the hospital but acquiesces that if she did, it was less than two days. Today, it's a small, clean scar behind her left ear, where she's kinda-sorta deaf in so I have to remember to stand on her right when I say something otherwise she probably never heard me in the first place.
