A trip to the ER for ME!

Don't wonder too much about these pictures.... there is an explanation at the bottom...

here I am at the ER


see how one eye brow is higher than the other one??


here i am trying harder to smile... the harder i try the funnier it looks...



Well i had heard about Bell's palsy before, but i never thought i would get it. It all started last week, when out of the blue i got this nasty canker sore/cold sore on my tongue. Now before this i have never had a cold sore of any kind... so i don't quite know how that happened. Anyway, that was painful.... but it was slowly getting better, so i wasn't too worried about it. Well, then almost exactly a week later when i walked the kids to school, i noticed that my upper left lip felt a bit numb. I didn't pay much attention to that really, but later around 9:45 am when i was getting ready to take Desi to do a little shopping. (she didn't have school because it was lagoon day and she decided not to go.) Anyway, as i was getting ready to go i noticed in the mirror that i could not smile right. Try as i might i could not make my left side work right. Well right away i was freaking out in my mind, thinking that's a sign of a stroke and with strokes, the sooner you get to a hospital the better. Well i called the clinic and told them my symptoms and they said to go to the ER because they had the more sophisticated testing there. So Desi, I and Lindzi went to the ER instead of shopping.. fun huh? Well i got there and they determined that it is Bell's palsy. Which is a partial paralysis of one side of the face... and it is usually temporary. And hopefully mine is temporary too. They put me on an anti virus and prednisone for 5 days. But it could take weeks, possibly months to completely go away. Apparently that sore on my tongue triggered this reaction in my body. The symptoms can range from mild to severe and thank heavens, mine seems to be on the milder side.... at least from what i have read about it online. Some people can't even close their eye hardly, and have to sleep with an eye patch on to keep it closed so it doesn't dry out. In my case, i can close my eye, but it takes more effort. I feel like i have about 50 percent muscle control over that side of my face. So now i just wait and pray and see how long it will take to get better. So all of you out there don't take your smile for granted... cuz i'm missing mine now....