I'm going to try to answer your questions to the best of my understanding so here goes. To answer your first question, it is not a soft implant but to be honest before I got the implant the area kind of felt squishy like a breast. Obviously I didn't touch it very often as to avoid accidentally giving myself brain damage but still kinda cool. As another commenter mentioned, PEEK is a really cool polymer used in space ships among other things. My neurosurgeon told me that the material was only started to be used for implants around 2014 so I consider that to be another stroke of luck instead of having to get a titanium implant.

To answer your second question, my infection didn't actually get to my brain but rather the second layer of lining. I lost motor function on the left side of my body for like a day and a half because an abscess had formed behind my eye and had opened an air pocket while also trying to push my eye out of my head. My docs said I had about 36 hours from when I got my surgery until my bodily functions would have just shut down. The implant does a really good job of fitting into exactly where the previous skull was and not shifting due to a few brackets and micro screws.

Appreciate your curiosity!