dlcohen04

I get home and I am sitting in my living room talking to my roomate for about an hour. As we are talking I start to notice I am talking out of the side of my mouth and everything feels really dry. I decide to go look at myself in the mirror at this point. I realize that my smile just isn't right and I am having trouble winking my eye. My nostril won't flare on one side and I also can't scrunch one side of my nose. I begin freaking out and luckily my doctor is able to see me on a Saturday.

The doctor tells me I have Bell's Palsy and its a good thing I realized it right away. The sooner you realize you have it the easier it is to control at the beginning.

Luckily I never had it too terribly. Laughing was weird...I had to cover my mouth when I laughed because it was way off. My right side would smile real big and the left would be a tiny smile. I couldn't pucker my lips, it was like a crooked pucker. Eating was difficult and if I chewed on my left side all the food would get stuck over there! I couldn't blow up my cheeks with air. I couldn't raise my eyebrows evenly. It was hard to drink without it spilling out of my mouth.

The progress: So I noticed it the night of July 27th and the 28th was when I really knew there was something wrong. The week prior I noticed a weird sensation in my eye and food wasn't tasting right. This is because you can lose 2/3rds of your taste buds with BP. Today is August 9 so it has been just about two weeks in. I have good news! I am almost all better. I can laugh like regular again without it getting all out of control. I can eat and drink almost normally except still dont want to chew too much at once on the left. I can almost flare my nostril all the way and my nose can almost scrunch all the way on the left side. When I pucker my lips its not a perfect pucker but getting close. The bottom line is that at the moment I am really the only person who can notice these slight differences. No one else can tell at all. I am hoping I will go back 100%...right now I would say im at like 90% Super close to being all better.

My face is sore by the way. It is tender to the touch on the left side. And my eye is a little sensitive to the sun, I just make sure I wear sunglasses outside because I just started squinting like crazy if sun gets in my left eye, but even that is not as bad as it was.

So here I am, two weeks in, and almost 100% recovered. I have come a long way in these two weeks and I was so scared at the beginning. I write this just to let you guys know that not every case lasts a super long time and things do get better. I read that you can get it more than once and that scares me. All I can do is try to stay as healthy as possible.

i wish everyone the best of luck and please if you have any questions about my experience feel free to ask me. I have spent the past two weeks learning about this so I feel like I know almost everything you could know about this!