The Bell's Palsy Chronicles, Part Two.

December 2008. So I am in the first phase. I am having bad headaches or neckaches. One thing about them I forgot to mention - the neurologist I went to described the path of the affected facial nerve and it turned out it followed exactly the areas where I was having the pains!

This went on for a few weeks. I counted every Sunday as a one-week-more milestone, and remembered as laughable that hospital doctor's opinion that I might feel some improvement the next day! The thing became somewhat more bearable, psychologically, as I got used to it. I even had fun being able make impossible grimaces, winking the right eye with the left wide wide open, for example. My students did not seem much bothered by my condition, with its accompanying difficulty in pronunciation. Only words with an 'F' sound seemed very difficult.

Sometimes though I did feel an extreme alienation, like I was not of this race of beings but something apart. I noticed startled looks on passers-by. One time in there I recall I had a bad Monster Attack. I was out on the street doing some shopping, and came to feel that I couldn't stand the people looking at me. I pulled my hat down over my eyes and kept my eyes down, not being able to make eye contact as I usually try to do.

By the end of December, the headaches thankfully tapered off. I had finished my cortisone treatment a week before, the dose by the end decreasing to only 2.5 mg, down from 250 mg on the first day. Also the anti virus drug had come to an end.

I call that the end of the first phase. I was free of headaches, but no change on the other symptoms. The headaches though had really been worrying me, these pains in the back of the head or on the side, low down, almost like a stiff neck. I was making the worst out of these pains, in my own mind, despite the relieving words of the neurologist that everything was as it should be with Bell's Palsy.

The stage I had reached was one of marking time. The left side of my face was completely immobile, but I had no unpleasant additional effects - no pain.