What happened to DRAW FREEHAND in Acrobat DC?

1.  Been using Acrobat for YEARS, and was finally forced into this version.
2.  Have been using DRAW FREEHAND to flawessly add notes - even full sentences - to documents for YEARS, up until this week (about 28oct24).
3. Out of nowhere. I write ONE (count 'em! ONE!) character, and the program drops out FREEHAND and defaults back to SELECT.  
4. Have I inadvertently flipped a switch somewhere, or did a coder hickup during an update?
5.  FWIW, my HIGHLIGHTER is now acting like the DRAW FREEHAND tool.

Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.