Bells Palsy

This post is not an easy one to write. But i know that when i was 1st going through this i felt alone and i searched for other people who were going through it. So i'm writing this post in the hope that will help somebody feel brave, and let them know they are not alone. So here goes... About 18 months ago I was sitting in an exam room doing a history exam. As i was writing i noticed that my lip was starting to feel funny. After a few minutes my eye started to feel like it was stuck and the inside of my mouth felt strange.  
I started worrying but i thought it was just the stress playing with mind and i knew that i had to keep answering the questions in my exam paper. When the exam was over i went to the parking lot and waited for my partner to pick me up. My face still did not feel right but i was busy replaying the exam in my head  trying to decide if i thought i had passed or not. Then i saw the car pulling up so i jumped in and started to try and tell my partner about the exam, but i could hardly speak.

I remember asking Greg if my face looked funny and he turned to look at me and his face went white. The entire left hand side of my face was paralyzed. I started shaking, i was scared because i had no idea what was going on. I thought that maybe i had had a stroke? We went straight to the doctors. The Dr told me that i had Bells Palsy. I had never heard of it before. Apparently the nerves that connect to my face had been crushed and stopped working. I had a blood test and an MRI to try and find the cause but they were both clear. The Dr decided that my Bells Palsy was a result of stress. I guess that seems plausible as i had a 6 year old, a 4 month old that was a terrible sleeper, i was going to Uni and had a home business. I thought i was doing a good job at balancing everything but i guess i wasn't.

Having Bells Palsy is one of the hardest things i have had to deal with. I looked like freak, i sounded like a freak and a lot of normal things became difficult. I had to tape my eye closed to sleep, eating was hard, drinking was almost impossible and don't even get me started on brushing my teeth!! But the hardest part was feeling ugly, feeling people stare at you, and feeling insecure! I became depressed and felt very sorry for myself and angry at the world that it had happened to me. I know that there are people out there suffering much worse things but i couldn't help feeing sorry for myself. It really is a crap thing to have. My bells Palsy was quite severe and my face face stayed completely paralyzed for 4 months. Then VERY slowly parts of my face started being able to move again. After about 8 months my face was around 90% healed and unfortunately that is as good as it got.

I still have slight paralysis in my left eye that gets a lot worse when i'm tired. My lip twitches and i still hear sounds extremely loudly on the effected side. Every day when i look in the mirror i am reminded of the imperfection that is now my face, although i am also grateful that it healed as much as it did.I dont have any pictures of my face when it was was totally paralyzed as i hid from cameras and from people all together. But i do have a pic from when i was recovering.

As you can see there is definitely something wrong with my face

looks horrible and this is when it had started getting better 

It took me a long time to find a positive thing to come out of this experience. But i guess that the positive was a lesson. i used to be very vain and always concerned with my looks. But having bells Palsy taught me a lot. I learnt that i am more than just my appearance. I learnt that you dont have to be beautiful on the outside to be a beautiful person. And i learnt that i am stronger than i thought. So if you are reading this and you have Bells Palsy please believe me when say that you are not a freak. You are not ugly! You are beautiful and are going to get better. Worrying about it will NOT help you. Stay strong and just continue to live life and have fun. Its not the end of the world.

Sorry if that post was a bit all over the place. So many thoughts spin through my head when i think about having BP.