Woman who thought she was just tired woke up with a paralysed face due to Bell’s Palsy

Amy Green woke up for work on a Monday morning two years ago, feeling slightly groggy. The night before, she’d gone to bed with a headache and felt like her tongue was numb but she was sure she just needed some rest. When the alarm went off for another day at her job as a recruitment consultant, she rolled over and realised something was really wrong. She couldn’t move her face at all. It felt completely paralysed.

Overnight, Amy, now 36, from Leeds, had developed Bell’s Palsy, where an inflammation forms around the facial nerve and this pressure causes facial paralysis on the affected side. Although she knew she needed to see a doctor, Amy remained calm. She went straight to her GP and received a diagnosis Bell’s Palsy. At that stage, it didn’t seem too severe but her doctor asked her to come back later that afternoon and as she felt fine, she decided to go to work. But a few hours later, she got much worse. She started slurring her speech and her face drooped on the right hand side.

She explains: ‘It was almost as if I was drunk. I was tripping over my words. I looked like I had been punched in the face and I was really hot and bothered.’ Amy went to A&E, where she was told that her palsy – a temporary weakness or paralysis – was now level five (out of six). She was told that they didn’t know how long she would have the condition. The treatment involves a 10-day course of steroids, after which the person just has to wait for the nerves to repair themselves. Most people make a full recovery within nine months but some people are left with slight paralysis for longer. If the damage is more severe, physiotherapy may be required or in some rare cases, when severe symptoms are still present after two years, surgery may be needed.

Amy told Metro.co.uk: ‘My body needed to regenerate and recover. I describe it as a broken face. ‘I was told I needed to rest to allow it to do that. I am a million mile an hour person. I work hard, do lots of social things outside work and I always have lots going on. I knew I needed to take care of myself to help it heal. ‘They explained that I needed to take care of my eye because I couldn’t close it at all. My eye doesn’t tear up so it gets really dry. When I tried to go to sleep, I couldn’t close it and I had to learn to tape that shut. You don’t realise how many times a day that you blink until you can’t do it. ‘I was scared and I cried but I couldn’t cry out of my broken eye. I still can’t cry sometimes. ‘I had to learn that this is a new normal for me. I had to learn how to eat and drink differently as I couldn’t move that side of my mouth. It was difficult and I had to have smaller portions, cut things up really small or have softer foods. It took longer to eat anything.’

Source: metro.co.uk

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