Once they got out of the emergency, the nurse came running and almost in panic started preparing what looked like a injection, I stopped her and asked her what it was before she broke off the seal, told me it was a steroid injection, which would be like a small plastic like capsule in size, to be injected straight into the veins and would then slowly dissolve into the system. My gut feeling was that I don't want to be injected with it, (I am not afraid of needles) now the mass opinion here is that you should get a steroid injection to get cured quicker, but at the same time people say that the steroid could have side effects. I asked if there was a option of oral medication, after consulting the neurologist a list of medicines were prescribed. Next they asked me to get admitted till at least the next morning when neurologist would visit the hospital, they said need to keep a eye on the patient to make sure that it does not spread to the other parts of the body as it could case permanent paralysis. I refused to get admitted what so ever, firstly I hate hospitals so I would not be able to sleep at all, secondly it was 1 am by now, I don't think any hospital staff is going to keep that much of a eye on me till morning and my feeling was, this was just to fill up the hospital beds.
So we had to sign papers which said that the patient has check out against medical advice and if anything was to happen it was not the hospitals responsibility. So back at home, my wife set alarms for every hour to wake up and check on me, the signs told was to check for drooling and then numbness on the hand and if so to rush back immediately. Nothing like that happened and in the morning we went back to meet the neurologist who did all the checks once again, fully confirmed that it was indeed Bell's Palsy and along with medication also suggested we visit the physiotherapy department who would give me some face exercises to be done as well some electric shock therapy to stimulate the nerves.
On checking with the doctor and google search telles you that Bell's Palsy could happen to anyone of any age and needs to be treated as soon as it is detected (ideally less than 12 hours since it starts) as longer you take for treatment to begin the longer it might take for you heal, also treatment prevents it from spreading through your body. The general indications of what causes this, is usually if the person has a ear infection or has had a viral fever in the last few days, what happens in this case is that there is inflammation around the nerve which is behind the ear, this causes the nerve to loose its control over half the face. (face is controlled by 2 main nerves behind each ear which then breakup and go onto control the muscles like eyebrows, eyelids etc) In case its a ear infection or a viral that is causing it, its easier to treat as you take away this infection and normalcy should return. In my case there was no sign or symptoms of ear infection or even a viral not had one for a long time before this, so my case was amongst rare ones, not completely unheard of but rare indeed.
So from the next day physiotherapy timing was assigned, started with me sitting in front of the mirror and exercises for the face was shown like
1. Close your mouth and try to hold air in your mouth without letting air out by not letting the lips part, initial few days use the hand to support closing the mouth completely.
2. Try to whistle by blowing out, again use fingers to help.
3. Try and raise the eyebrows use fingers to push the right one, it up till it can go back up by itself.
4. Try a big smile and use your finger to push the right side up.
5. Slowly close your eyelids jamming them shut, again use the support of the hand to close the right eyelid.
each of these exercises had to be done 15 - 20 times in a session and to do these exercises 2 to 3 times each day or even more if I could handle it. Then came the electric shock treatment, now what is supposed to happen is that they take 2 electrodes and they place it on your face and give you mild pulses which are supposed to stimulate the nerves, now while one is fixed the other is moved around to find the various nerves points that control your face muscles, once found they keep it there for a bit, while u count it pulsating for like 20 pulses, I don't know if this happens often but out of the 5 days that I went for this 3 times I got a shock from this instrument and not a mild one trust me. Its when the guy finishes with one nerve and moves to the next is when I got these jolts, it could be because he did not turn the voltage down all the way to nil or if he lifted the electrode while the current was still passing even if for a minor second. After the 3rd time I received this shock I decided to discontinue this, also parallelly a relative found out from doctors abroad that while this treatment could kick start your nerves it could do some damage to your nerve ends which would be felt only later in life.
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| (Pic - 1) That me keeping a straight face |
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| (Pic - 2) That's me trying to smile |
So while the face was ok for the first few days by the 4th day it had got really bad, the face was really drooping and talking was now a big problem, most people could not tell that something was wrong with me as long as I kept a straight face (see pic 1 above) but if you look closely you will see that the muscles on right side is drooping. Also as long as I did not attempt to talk, no one could tell. Every time I spoke the sound was not totally right as lack of lip control and there were blows of air from the lips like with words that had P or B in the start, and more than other people noticing I was more conscience of what I was trying to say, as I knew that it was not clear to me. I clicked a few pictures of myself back then, in the second image that's me trying to smile using all the face muscles and not me trying to pull a face, as you can see the right side was affected in my case - eye lid, eye brow, the forehead muscle, the cheek, lip refused to move. The eye lid initially had to be forced to shut and I had to use a sleep mask (eye cover) so that it would force shut.
As luck also would have it a project came along, now doctors had advised that as far as possible avoid going out and just relax for a few days, but work was not easy to come by and this was a interesting project, I had to shoot a video for an idea, for this an
INKPAD that was custom designed to get adults who were illiterate excited and to get them to sign up for their education program, this was run by a NGO called Door Step School, of course it had to be shot in the slums and of course I still went ahead and did it, this video went on to win multiple awards across the globe including a SILVER at
Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, a BRONZE
Epica Awards,
Adfest (Bkk). It was a strange feeling at the shoot because only after a while of shoot did I inform the crew of what I had, most of the people were working with me the first time so didn't know that there was anything wrong with me. I had to keep sunglasses on at all times, since my eyelid would not shut and there was the risk of something going into your eye and causing permanent damage. I was carrying eye drops and had to put it every few hours.
Then my wife also took me for ayurvedic treatment, here the doctor told me to continue with the existing treatment and added his set of medicines as well, so mornings would begin with some medicine that was to be had 30 min's before breakfast followed by a nasal spray with steaming (it was horrible smelling) then a face massage with some oil that was given, then some other tablet just before breakfast and a whole bunch of tables post breakfast, then rest of the day also there were pills to be had before and after meals along with the physiotherapy that I had to do at least 3 times a day. I did do them as many times as I could do it.
Final result was that my face was 98% back to normal in less than 15 days while most doctors and even google tells you that this takes around a month to even a few more to go to normal, I was lucky to have got treatment on time and thank God for a speedy recovery. I wrote about this so that in case someone does end up with a similar situation they may be at least be aware of what someone has gone through, and that might help them.
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