-- yup, there's a hole. (duh)
-- it's in front part of drum, not touching bone nerve ending fan-out, and not touching the rim (that's good). it's the ideal place to rip, if you had to have your ear rip.
-- the rip is just over 30% of the eardrum. it's borderline as far as needing help healing vs. letting it heal on its own, but he didn't want to recommend surgery just to recommend surgery. he'll see how it's doing in 2 weeks. with no prior ear problems and being healthy/fit/etc, he anticipates my body should heal itself.
-- 50% rip is where body can't do it itself.
-- should I need surgery, there are two options, but the first usually works for rips my size. 1) is in-office: they cut a piece of "scafalloding" paper just over the size of the rip and "glue" it on, and then put something on the ear to piss it off and make the ear start healing under the paper. then the body rejects the foreign-body paper and he grabs it back out w/ tweezers in a couple weeks. 2) is traditional surgery w/ knives/crap. doesn't think i'd need that, unless body refuses to heal.
-- healing could be 2 weeks to 6 weeks, or not at all. can scuba dive after few week safety window after it heals.
-- silicon soft gel earplugs for showering and swimming. (but not scuba diving, obviously). can wear normal concert-style ear plugs to mute annoying loud frequencies as needed, but shouldn't wear ear plugs all the time so germs/etc don't get trapped in there.
So overall, quite good. I'm most excited about getting some soft gel earplugs and being able to shower w/o choreography around the water spray, which inevitable fails and ends in pain.