a HUGE gear change

so.  charles is not deploying. 
yea.
he had to go to a different post yesterday for some paperwork and a doctor's appointment to have his ears looked at.  the doctors here had told him that his ears looked kinda messed up and that he should go there for a closer look but it was likely nothing.  boy were they wrong!  this surgery is what he will have to do.  his is pretty much the most serious of what is described on that site - his bones in his ear are mush and his ear drum is burst and infected, if it gets worse he will have hearing loss/vertigo/brain damage/facial paralysis, etc.  hence, he's not going anywhere.  he will be having surgery on 5 January and again 6 months later to reconstruct the bones in  his ear.  with any luck, all will go as planned and this hiccup will not result in a medical chapter (being kicked out of the military for medical reasons). 
he is actually doing amazingly well with the news, better than i am in fact.  he's adopted a "well, i can't control it and i have to take care of myself before i can worry about career progression" attitude.  i'm still stuck on "huh."  it took me several hours yesterday to realize that i should be thankful and happy about this.  and i am... now... pretty much.  it's not that i wanted him to be away from me, more that i wanted him to do this for his career and to have the experience.  we would also have been earning a lot of extra money, and deployments/time spent apart are always good for our relationship.  plus, i had lots and lots of plans to keep myself occupied while he was gone.  i dont like to keep super super busy while he's home so that i can focus on him; but most of my plans involved things to get myself healthy (lots of time at the gym and more healthy groceries/meals).  granted, these are things i should do anyway even with him here, but i dont do it as much as i should.  so yea, must find a new balance. 
bright side: he will now be (forced) able to get his ears fixed, and with equal importance: he will be able to pursue an appointment with a urologist to get cracking on our fertility issues. 
i have NO idea why God has given us this new change of direction, i'm just along for the ride really.  but suffice it to say that the ride just got much more interesting.