My Own Nightmare

I had to think long and hard about this post and not sure if I will ever publish it but I feel I need to put my feelings down on "paper!"

Three weeks ago yesterday (Saturday April 21) I woke up with the beginning signs of Bell's Palsy!   HERE is a link for a complete explanation of the syndrome!  I started to put on my mascara and my eye would not close!  We were headed to Fayetteville for spring game and so we headed out!

As the day went on my eye became harder and harder to shut and my face started to feel weird!  I am a nurse in my prior life (pre kids) and Todd is a Physical Therapist in a prior life (LOL) so we knew the signs but decided to call my brother in law to make sure!  Was diagnosed over the phone and the nightmare began!

By Sunday my face had started to lose movement on the left side!  Me being a very expressive person with my face, I was quickly becoming devastated!  I cried a lot and seemed to cling to my husband more than usual!  I am a 90 mile an hour mom and wife that normally has 100 commitments at any given time, but I always need him!  He is my rock!

By Monday morning I am in the doctors office getting my steroids and acyclovir!  I am on the Internet reading any bit of info that I can dig up!  NOT A GOOD THING, BTW!!!  At this point I am afraid that I will never smile again!  It is a VERY scary and emotionally draining syndrome!! 

I basically hid in the house for the first week and a half!  A VERY hard thing for me since I am always volunteering and I am a social BUG!!

The 11th day is when it went to HELL!!  The pain was UNREAL!!  I felt like someone was stabbing me in my ear and the left side of my face had sharp, shooting pains all the time!!  They NEVER let up!  Talk about going INSANE!!  I wasn't sleeping and my face was swelling by the day!  After several days of this I am calling the doctor to try and get some reassurance that I am not losing my mind!  She tried me on some new meds but they did not seem to help at all and it only got 100 times worse at night!  By the middle of the 2nd week I am pretty sure I was a lunatic!!  I was mean to everyone and cried all the time!  My doctor made an appointment with an ENT to check me out!  

I went to see the ENT praying for some good news!  They were thinking that I could possibly have a syndrome called Ramsay Hunt and it does not have a good prognosis!  Do you know what it is like to have something like that going around in your head??  Thinking that you may never move your face again? Smile at your children??  JUST HORRIBLE!!

The ENT confirmed that I did not have Ramsay Hunt!  That was a huge sigh of relief!  He did his examination and found that I had movement in all three nerve "branches" that were affected!  That was GREAT news!!  It almost seems, that as soon as I heard his words, I could start to relax and feel some movement!  :)

Today has been 3 weeks and 1 day!  I have about 60% movement today and I am praying and believing that God will return my smile back to me!!

If I don't have faith, I am afraid that I may just lose it!!


Just a few things that the Dr's just don't tell you!


1.  It is PAINFUL!!
2.  You will gain 15 pounds without a BLINK OF THE EYE!!
3.  You will be emotionally devastated and a complete basket case!
4.  You will need a lot of support from your family!
5.  Be prepared to cry a LOT!!


I also want to apologize to all of my readers considering I have been all over the place!  I know that I haven't been organized or posting very much!  I am sorry!


UPDATE...5 weeks tomorrow and I am about 90% back to normal!  My eye is still slow to close and my smile is almost 100%!  Once again, so sorry for not being around and posting!!  I am hoping that I am back on track and posting by next week!!