This article will not follow my usual format, and may not be of interest to some, but it will explain to all of you why I have not been writing for the last few months.
Six weeks ago today, on 11th December, I woke up
to find something wrong with my face. A swift visit to the bathroom mirror
confirmed my suspicions: the left-hand side of my face was not working at all.
My smile was a grimace worthy of Conan Doyle’s ‘Man with the Twisted Lip,’ my left
eye would not blink or even close, and there was a sharp pain in my neck.
A couple of hours later I found myself getting out of an
ambulance at the Accident & Emergency Department of Derriford Hospital in
Plymouth, something I had resisted heavily but upon which the wonderful Emergency
Team had insisted, in case I had had a stroke. I knew, in the back of my mind,
that they were wrong. In fact, I knew exactly what had caused my condition, as it
affected my mother many, many years ago. But I am not a medic, in any sense of
the word, so I waited patiently as we crossed the rutted, potholed ambulance
car park surrounded by a latticework of metal screens (because this hospital is
undergoing major reconstruction) and entered the lobby where the Stroke Team
was waiting for me. I cannot praise all these people enough. They are working
in awful noisy, crowded conditions, and yet their professionalism and
dedication are admirable. I was pushed into a corridor where the team of about
six people stood around me, introduced themselves, and waited for the senior consultant
to diagnose my condition. After only a couple of questions and tests, they
agreed on the verdict: Bell’s Palsy, and I was taken off to a different area of
the department.
The waiting area where I was left sitting next to an elderly man, was not too crowded, but felt like an indifferent kind of no-man’s-land in which people were sorted out. On one row of chairs a woman lay covered in a thin blanket, asleep and, according to my new companion, waiting for a bed. A television mounted on a wall played soundlessly. A lady hospital orderly trundled around with a blood-pressure-testing machine, whilst behind me was a counter where new arrivals queued to be assessed. The lady orderly (forgive my archaic terminology, but I haven’t been admitted to hospital for many years) asked me if I’d been ‘triage-ed’ and I had to ask her to explain what she meant. Had I been seen in one of those consulting rooms, she asked, pointing to some doors. I hadn’t, so off she went to another patient.
After a while a tea trolley was
wheeled into sight, manned by two tired-looking volunteers, the kind of people
who have hearts of gold and have seen just about everything awful there is to
see in a hospital. One of them approached me: would I like a hot drink? She
might have been offering champagne, the thought was so welcome. She returned
from the trolley with a plastic cup steaming with hot tea, and the offer of a
biscuit. My half-paralysed mouth wasn’t up to a biscuit, and in fact had great
difficulty with the plastic cup of tea, but that’s another story.
As we waited, my elderly ‘neighbour’ and I watched a silent
programme of ‘Homes Under the Hammer’ on the television, and got chatting, as
you do. He was delighted to be able to offload a wealth of his history to a
willing listener who was having trouble saying anything at all! My lips, I
realised, were simply not responding to my brain’s signals. When I spoke, I
sounded as though I had a very large toffee in my mouth.
When at last I was called and made my way through one of the
mysterious doors they proved indeed to be consulting rooms, and there sat an
enthusiastic young doctor in front of a computer. She apologised for the wait –
to my astonishment, because how could she have controlled that list of people
waiting? Then she proceeded to give a swift summary of what had happened to my
face and what to expect, as well as prescribing a massive dose of steroids. Now
I’d already been on steroids in November, to sort out a chest infection brought
on by the same virus the senior consultant had told me a few hours earlier had
been the probable cause of the Bell’s Palsy. The virus had caused temporary
damage to my facial nerve. This nerve, the 7th cranial nerve,
spreads from the brain stem in two parts, travelling across the face like the
branches of a tree, and affecting eye, tongue, mouth and ear. I wasn’t very
happy to be about to take steroids again, but they are the only thing which is
prescribed for Bell’s Palsy, and by now, I would have taken anything the doctor
suggested. The news that it would take at least three months to clear came as a
shock. The best news was that I could go home!
A surly taxi driver agreed to drive me back to Tavistock for
an extortionate amount of money, but at that point I would have paid a fortune to
get home. Communications with Mike had been virtually non-existent, as both my
elderly companion and I had found we had virtually no signal on our phones. I
managed to get a message out to him, and by the time I arrived back outside our
house, he was waiting, as was my son who had dropped everything and driven
across from Exeter.
From that moment, life changed. Eating, drinking, sleeping,
even talking were all new challenges. Over the next few days I became adept at
drinking with a straw whilst pinching together my left-hand lips. Eating with a
spoon, sleeping with my eye taped down, endless fatigue and sharp pains across
my face became the norm. I have a severe dry eye condition anyway, and the
doctor had been concerned about future problems with my left eye, so I took
myself off the computer, off my mobile, and off my Kindle. I avoided answering the
phone, and I avoided contact with people. I felt like a pariah!
After three weeks things began to improve, but very slowly.
But you don’t care about pace, because you are just so glad to see the smallest
sign that it won’t last forever. I found I could read hardback books without
too much eye strain, and as we have such a large collection of books in this
house, it has been a joy to revisit some old and well-loved volumes, many
completely forgotten about.
So here I am after six weeks, back on the computer for a short time to write this. I’ve eaten lunch without having to mash it up like a toddler; drunk a glass of water without a straw, and been able to watch some TV. The only things bothering me now are the ongoing fatigue, my lack of stamina – I’ve been going for a short walk every day, but I find it exhausting – and awful tinnitus in my left ear, which pulsates and beeps with infuriating constancy. And my left eye still cannot blink.
I must not complain, because had this in fact been a stroke, I’d be in big trouble. Mercifully I’m on the mend, and perhaps in another six weeks I will be almost there. And here I must thank my marvellous husband for his patience and hard work looking after someone who at times can be a most intolerant patient!
If you’ve reached the end of this, thank you for reading it!
I’d love to hear anyone else’s experience of this strange and little-known
illness, so please do use the comments. Otherwise, I hope to be back to normal
with some gardening posts in a few months’ time.
