The Bell's Palsy Chronicles, Part Three.

January, 2009. Now there came what I am calling Phase Two. The condition had settled down, the headaches had stopped, nothing was really happening.

Soon after the New Year, some five weeks into the facial paralysis, I started again going to my band practice. We had taken a holiday break and started up again the second Friday in the year, January 9. It's a brass band of about thirty members, and I play clarinet in it. Well of course I couldn't play at the moment, as I couldn't control the left side of my mouth, and the air came spilling out to the left of the mouthpiece. But I went anyway, as I'm the key-man and all around general custodian around the place where we practice.

I was soon asked whether I wanted to help out in the percussion department, and the first time I sat down there I had to cover my ears when the band began to play. I had forgotten that sensitivity to loud noises I'd early on noticed by chance, and later read about in various accounts. Being surrounded by many instruments all sounding at once constituted a loud noise. I was surprised at the painful, jangling sounds, because in my daily life I had seldom had problems of that kind.

After trying some rolled-up tissue in each ear I later used some wax earplugs which are commercially available. These I could form as I needed and found I could sort of close the ear partway, and still have no problems.

This increased consciousness of the ear sensitivity problem I'm calling Phase Two, as only now had it really made itself noticeable. In fact over the following weeks it seemed to increase somewhat. I didn't have this checked out by a specialist, and suspect it just seemed so as I was more aware of it. Even listening to the car radio I had to keep the volume down at times, most recently I can remember while listening to a soprano opera singer. Loud, especially high frequency sounds are painful for the left ear, and it seems as though the hearing partially cuts out, like a kind of overload.

I took it as something that went with the territory, used those earplugs while with the band, and tried otherwise to avoid high loud sounds. As an aside, let me say I looked around and thought I might try playing the tuba. It's a completely different instrument, but I thought with its big mouthpiece I could cover the left side of my mouth and so get around the air-spilling thing. One of our tuba players let me try his and indeed I was able to get a sound out of it. So a couple weeks later he gave me my first lesson on it and I have since been practicing on a sousaphone, the marching version of the tuba. Perhaps the tension and vibration produced in the lips may be of some help.

This phase lasted well over the four weeks I've been talking about per phase. As I write this it's actually the 8th of March 2009, so I'm looking back at this past January. And it's only now in the past week or so, that I feel a lessening of this ear thing.