Bell's Palsy

On Saturday I awoke with a strange numbness on the left side of my face—nothing serious, a sensation remindful of a trip to the dentist after the work has been done and the Novocain has not yet worn off. I shrugged it off. At a certain age—mine—the body does strange things and panicking about each and every small deviation from the norm is fruitless. More often than not, the following morning brings relief. The next morning didn’t. At coffee with a friend, I mentioned the condition and she said, “Can you smile?”  I tried. The smile didn’t work; only the right side of my face reacted. “Bell’s palsy,” she said. “Go see someone.”

I looked it up on the ‘net. Yes indeedy, these are the symptoms, all delightful:

• Drooling.
• Eye problems, such as excessive tearing or a dry eye.
• Loss of ability to taste.
• Pain in or behind your ear.
• Numbness in the affected side of your face.
• Increased sensitivity to sound.

BP is might be caused by the same herpes simplex virus that leads to cold sores, and may be linked to a case of shingles I had late last year, but the truth is nobody knows why it strikes and when.  At worst, BP can cause irreversible damage to facial nerves, involuntary contraction of certain muscles when you're trying to move others (synkinesis) and partial or complete blindness of the eye that won't close, due to excessive dryness and scratching of the cornea. Oh good.

There's no real cure but it generally goes away within a month.  The trick is to keep the affected eye moist, and to tape it shut at night. Steroids may help shorten the recovery time of three to four weeks.

I'm not sure why but I find this particular situation depressing. I'm beginning to slur my words, and it reminds me a bit too much of the way my father spoke when Alzheimer's got him. The partial paralysis and subsequent facial drooping is emotionally affecting too. It screams of old age, of stroke, of limited time. I have to be very careful when I drink something as I dribble without noticing, and I can burn myself since there's no sensation in my left cheek. All in all, the whole thing is a bother more than a serious threat to my health, but it’s affecting my self-pride. Right now I don’t want to talk, or be seen.

It’ll pass, I’m sure. The very neat thing about the body and mind are their adaptive powers. This time next week I expect to be proudly slurring and dribbling with abandon. Or maybe not.