The Bell's Palsy Chronicles, Part Four.

So we were talking about January 2009. I had had the condition nearly two months already. It was interesting that I kept hearing about friends of friends, acquaintances and relatives who had had it too, and my first question was always how long did they have it. I heard widely varying accounts of two, three, to six months or more than a year. The latter of which was rather discouraging, but most often the average seemed to be around three months. And also interesting was the fact that invariably, at the start of a new week someone would say 'Oh! you're looking better this week!" I would thank them, with a two-ton grain of salt.

Well here I was approaching the two month mark and nothing seemed to be happening for the better. Every day upon waking up, I'd go into the bathroom and take off the bandage that protected my left eye at night, since it doesn't close all the way. The bottom lid is immobile so it doesn't come up to meet the top one. An open slit remains at bottom, so I cover the whole with a kind of bandage to protect it and prevent it from drying out at night. It has become my nightly ritual.

So in the morning there I stand, and after it all comes off I look intently into my sagging face to see if there's any change. I grimace and raise my eyebrows and - hey! On the morning of January 20 I think I can move my left eyebrow a tiny little bit. Or is it the right side pulling the left up, as I've noticed before? Hmm. I'm not really positive but I think it's really independent movement. I'm excited, and that little tiny possible change makes my day.

So that's how the Third Phase started, and indeed by the second or third day it was obvious that there was some real movement there. A little line would appear above the outer corner of the left eyebrow as if to say 'look what I can do too'. It seemed to me maybe this would be the start of a thawing process, my face would slowly begin coming back to life.

However, after about a week or two the eyebrow seemed to have reached some limit of its own beyond which it was as yet unwilling to go. After a while I found myself telling people about it the second or third time when they asked about any recent developments. I had to accept the fact that I'd reached the next plateau, that again there was nothing new happening for a while, but I did have a partly working left eyebrow to show for it.