Faith has a Hematoma

Faith has a hematoma in her right ear.  This girl never expresses that she's in pain and a few nights ago when she got up into bed I grabbed her ears like I always do to pet her and she yelped.  I jumped up and switched on the light to check her out and saw that her right ear has this huge swollen bubble.  I did some googling and found out that it is a burst blood vessel in her ear and that's a sac of blood.

In the right ear you can see a line from the tip of her ear and then down the middle of it, above that is the entire bubble

I took her to the vet as they say that hematoma's in dogs are usually caused by excessive scratching or shaking due to ear infections, but they said her ears were perfect.  In fact they said she looked like she was in overall great health for a 10 year old dog.  They did say that at some point she must have torn her ACL in one of her rear legs and they confirmed that her joints are getting sore from arthritis, but they didn't see any major concerns.

The options for treatment are surgery, draining the sack several times until it stops re-filling with fluid, or waiting it out and eventually the body would absorb the blood and her ear would shrivel up like a cauliflower ear.  At this point, we decided to go with waiting it out.

It's hard to remember not to grab and pet her ears like I always do, and I feel horrible when I go to pat her head and she flinches before I touch her because she knows I normally go for her ears.  Luckily, in the last 3 days, I've only grabbed her ears on accident once.

I'm not sure how much longer I will be able to tolerate knowing that she seems to be in some pain.  Especially when she gets up into the chair with me, where she doesn't fit, and looks at me like this.

She has it made though, I mean how many dogs manage to take a nap on the floor with a pillow?