The Bell's Palsy Chronicles, Part One.

The Bell's Palsy Chronicles

March 6 2009, Friday. I'm starting this somewhat late in the game, but hope to put in all the important phases as I have seen them. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

November 21 2009, Friday. Before I went to my band practise this Friday I took two aspirin for a weird headache I had in the back bottom left section of my head. They did the trick. I had no more problems that evening.

November 22 2009, Saturday. The headache came back, but aspirin banished it again. I didn't think much about it, though I had never had a headache in that area before.

November 23 2009, Sunday. I woke up and went in the bathroom, and saw I looked odd. My left eye seemed to be wider open than the right; altogether, the left side seemed weak. I could still move it but not as much or as strongly as the other side. I was afraid, but immediately thought it had something to do with the bad tooth on the upper left side, last molar up there, that I'd been neglecting. Sabine thought we should wait and see what Monday brought. Of course to my mind came the thought of a stroke, but I did wait on Monday after all.

November 24 2009, Monday. After calling in sick I went over to see my Doctor, Dr. Aman at the Franziskus Hospital. Based on some symptoms he thought it was not a stroke; I remember one was that I could wrinkle one side of my forehead and not the other, whereas in a stroke the whole forehead is lamed. Another point was that my vision was not affected, while with a stroke there's a loss of peripheral vision on one side.

Dr. Aman sent me to the Gertrauden Hospital, where in the first aid area they looked at me and sent me up to Ear-Nose-Throat, NOT to Neurology. I had many tests done on me over the course of the late morning to afternoon. At one point I was told to go have something in the cafeteria and come back in an hour. There in the cafeteria I had a first taste of the Monster Syndrome, where I feel I must look so weird I don't want people looking at me. I wanted to hide, and couldn't eat or drink normally. I was continually slurping and slobbering because the left side of my mouth didn't close properly.

I went back upstairs later and had many varied tests done on my ears and eyes mostly. Oh there was a taste test too. I actually had noticed when brushing my teeth already on Sunday and maybe even Saturday that I had an odd taste in my mouth, not like toothpaste but indefinable, almost metallic. So in the hospital a nice nurse took a cotton swab and touched various places on my tongue and I was tuo say Sweet, Sour, Salty or Bitter. Most of them were completely unidentifiable to me, like that odd toothpaste taste. Once I could taste Sweet, but otherwise a total washout.

The ear tests had me wearing headphones and listening to various beeps, some painfully loud. Sometimes I had to respond to them, sometimes not. The eye tests entailed lying on a slab with a foot-long black horizontal bar suspended over my head, running left to right directly above my eyes as I was lying there. The nice young lady nurse put some black goggly things over my eyes, and said part of this test would be the flushing of some warm water in each ear in turn. First she opened one goggle eye so I could now see a red light moving from end to end on that black bar. I think that was to calibrate some thing which was measuring the movements of my eyeballs. So I was put in the dark again and she began squeezing that warm water with a big syringe into my right ear. Beforehand she said I might feel a little dizziness. Har. Funny thing though, I remember having this ear-flushing procedure as a kid, a number of times. So she started, and soon after the rushing sound of the warm water in my ears, I did start to feel dizzy with a vengeance! The world was spinning, and my eyes too of course, which they were monitoring. Then they did the left ear, which didn't seem to have the same strong dizzy effect as the first ear.

Nevertheless, some time later I finally went in to see the main doctor to get the lowdown. I still had the fear that it was some stroke like thing. I asked him and he said no, definitely not with those symptoms. So he wanted to start me on a treatment of cortisone IV shots, with a lessening dose each day for three weeks. He gave me three options, first to stay in the hospital for one daily IV treatment, or second to come to the hospital every day to get the IV, or third to have my regular doctor do it for me. After a call to Dr. Aman to ask whether he'd be willing and able to do that, I opted for the third course. The doctor in the hospital gave me the first IV, told me some things I should know, such as that I had to cover my left eye with a compress before going to bed to prevent its drying out. The accepted therapy for this facial paralysis included three drugs he told me, first the cortisone, then an anti viral tablet and third a circulation promoting pill. The last he was a bit hesitant about, asking me if I had any cardiac rhythm disturbance, which I said no to. Asked how long this thing would last, the doctor said he hoped I'd see some improvement the next day already!

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Beginning the next day, November 24 2009, I went to my doctor every day to follow the list of doses for the cortisone the hospital doctor had given me. I had to run around to various pharmacies to get the goods. The regimen was to last three weeks more or less, with the dose decreasing every day and finally changing to pills for the last several doses. There was a problem with the first weekend, but my doctor invited me to come to his place to get my IVs. That was quite fun. Also I was taking the anti virus pills every day, big ones and four a day. I missed several at first so I was taking an average of three a day at first. The third medication, for circulation, was a failure for me. I took one the first evening as I believe they were supposed to be taken, but in the middle of the night got up with my heart racing, too fast, too fast. I had no pain but only this fast heartbeat. It slowly came down again, but I didn't take any more of those pills. One of the first days I went to my doctor for a treatment, I was crossing the street and sneezed. With my hand over my mouth, somehow it sounded very loud on the left side. That was the first inkling I had of the increased sensitivity to loud sounds I was later to experience. Seems to be another typical symptom as I later read online.

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Thus began the first phase of my bout of Bell's Palsy. That's how the thing seems to have articulated itself over time, in phases of three weeks more or less. In that first phase I worried a lot; wondered if there was a tumor in there causing this; one main phenomenon was the headaches I was getting nearly every day. They would come in that same back lower left part of my head, and become a kind of stiff neck feeling on the left side of my head, in front of and below my left ear. Later in December I went to a neurologist downtown at Potsdamer Platz and he did a lot to relieve my worries - everything I was experiencing was part of the typical picture of Bell's Palsy, including the headaches. I had had the opportunity extended to me by one of two doctors I happen to have as evening students, to get an appointment for an MRI scan. My neurologist however said there was no need for that at all, except if the condition didn't go away; so I cancelled the temporary appointment my doctor friend had set up with his MRI colleague. Actually at this remove I am mixing up the chronology a bit. I cancelled the appointment, only to have my regular doctor say it was not a bad idea to do it after all; it wouldn't hurt and such MRI appointments were hard to get at short notice. I called the MRI place back to reactivate the appointment but she said it had already been cancelled at nine that morning, and did I realize that the treatment would cost €400? So I let it go, but mentioned this later to my doctor friend who'd set it up for me in the first place. He was scandalized, and promised to straighten things out with them. But by the time we next talked, the idea of having the scan had gone by the wayside.

And so it ran. I went back to work at the end of the first week, teaching English as a foreign language. I found it wasn't a problem to make myself understood, and that most people were sympathetic and understanding. Especially at the beginning it was a great strain after a long day at work, trying to make myself understood. I found I was exaggerating my pronunciation, pulling my mouth way over to the right side. I sensed I could thus better pronounce things, but actually I think that was a hindrance and also a strain, naturally. Over time I learned to try to avoid that, although sometimes when I felt nervous for example it would happen on its own.

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More next time . . .