Some of you may or may not have heard rumor that I will be having knee replacement surgery. This is true and is scheduled to take place Monday, Oct. 24. As a result, there will be a visiting priest covering the weekend Masses of Oct. 29-30 and there will be no daily Masses Wed. – Friday, Oct 26-28. If my recovery goes well, I hope to be able to resume a normal schedule in November with some expected limitations. I will be prohibited from driving for at least 2 weeks. So, Carol will be driving me as needed. I will keep you posted on the parish Facebook page and MyParish App. Since I am talking about my health, here is something else. As you well know if you have had any conversations with me, I have a very significant hearing loss. It is genetic. My father had profound hearing loss and of us six siblings, four of us have the same problem. My loss became evident about 30 years ago. I have attempted to address it by the use of aids. I have kind of lost track, but I think I have consulted about 10 different audiologists over these years. I have had mixed results. If you seek help for hearing aids, I advise doing some homework to get with a good audiologist. It makes a huge difference. Technology has made large advances with hearing aids. But they still do not make 100% correction like eyeglasses. They cannot restore hearing that does not exist. I have virtually no high frequency hearing. This causes distortion in my ability to understand. After a recent hearing evaluation, it was determined that I qualify to have the Cochlear implant. The audiologist tells me it is a bit of a gamble. Usually, it is better but sometimes it doesn’t help much and the bad side of this is you lose all normal hearing in one ear as a result of the implant which places a transmitter directly to the inner ear. But if it all squares away with my insurance I am going to go for it. I have reached the point where I don’t have much to lose. The date for this is yet to be determined. So, I ask for your prayers as I get overhauled, updated, reprogramed, and renewed. I put it in the Lord’s hands. Yours in Christ our Lord, Fr. Sid.