It’s not clear whether Bell’s is caused by a virus or by a biomechanical process that compresses the nerve, such as pregnancy. In contemporary western medicine there is not a lot you can do to treat Bell’s palsy doctors generally give you steroids, and then you wait for the nerve to grow back. The Greeks, the Romans and the Persians all noticed a condition whereby the forehead could not wrinkle, the face was paralysed on one side and facial spasms occurred. But Bell was not the first doctor to describe paralysis of the seventh cranial nerve. S ir Charles Bell, anatomist, artist and surgeon, provided his name to Bell’s palsy in the 1820s. “I’d rather not be ugly for you,” I said. That night I cried in the hospital bed and wept into Tony’s chest. The efficient, steroid-prescribing, short-of-stature, short-on-advice doctor left the room. But I was relieved not to have had a stroke.
I asked the neurologist if the Bell’s palsy would go away he said sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t, there is no way of knowing. A Bell’s sufferer might have muffled hearing, hear a tinny sound, or find loud noises unbearable. Apparently, people who have had a stroke can lift their foreheads fine, but they can’t smile or show their teeth people with Bell’s palsy cannot lift their foreheads. When I said that I did, he seemed relieved.
He asked if I heard a ringing in my left ear. Perhaps more important, my mother had Bell’s palsy when she was in her 50s, so I knew, and she knew, what it looked like.Ī neurologist came in. I am bad at science but I have differential diagnosis in the blood. I am the granddaughter of a doctor, the sister of a doctor, the niece of two doctors and the wife of a doctor, so I speculated that either I’d had a stroke or I had Bell’s palsy (unexplained facial paralysis). Though his voice was calm on the phone, I knew that he thought I may have had a stroke. Then he said, “I’ll be over in 10 minutes.” He told me to call the obstetrician immediately and have him call a neurologist. I called my husband, Tony, and told him that I couldn’t move the left side of my face. I came out of the bathroom my mother saw my face and was alarmed. After looking in the mirror, entirely different. Before looking in the mirror, I was the same person. A stroke? I was astonished – my face hadn’t felt any different before I looked in the mirror. Eyebrow, fallen eyelid, fallen lip, fallen, frozen, immovable. The left half of my face had fallen down. I got up to look in the mirror in the bathroom. “Go look in the mirror.” I looked in the mirror. “That’s not what I mean,” she said, kind but firm. “I’m Irish.” Many of my ancestors, after one or two gin and tonics, look sleepy, so crinkled and heavy do their crescent eyes become. “Yes, my eyes are a little droopy,” I acknowledged. Taken aback by the apparent non sequitur and comment on my appearance, I tried a joke. Then the lactation consultant looked at me curiously.
#Droppy hand disease how to#
The patient lactation consultant was trying to teach me how to feed both babies at the same time, using the “football hold”. My mother was in the corner, holding one baby, while I breastfed the other. Two days later, the lactation consultant came to see how the babies were feeding. The nurses lay Hope and William on the bassinet, and before I held them, they held each other’s hands. Miraculously, the twins were delivered healthy at the razor’s edge of 36 weeks.
I learned I had a condition called cholestasis of the liver, which involves nonstop itching, but worse – the bile leaking into my bloodstream could immediately kill the babies. I thought of my great-aunt Laura’s babies, buried on some grassy plain in Iowa, throughout my complicated pregnancy. Rarely, Bell's palsy can recur.My mother paused, then said, “Well, your great-aunt Laura had twins.” A small number of people continue to have some Bell's palsy symptoms for life. Symptoms usually start to improve within a few weeks, with complete recovery in about six months. It may be a reaction that occurs after a viral infection.įor most people, Bell's palsy is temporary. The exact cause is unknown, but it's believed to be the result of swelling and inflammation of the nerve that controls the muscles on one side of your face. Your smile is one-sided, and your eye on that side resists closing.īell's palsy, also known as facial palsy, can occur at any age. This makes half of your face appear to droop. Bell's palsy causes sudden weakness in your facial muscles.
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