Bell's Palsy Update - Month 5 Ends

Blah, blah, blah...Bell's Palsy...blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's still with me. But it's definitely fourth quarter in this game...and I do believe I am winning.

Honestly, there really isn't much more I can say about my bout with Bell's that I haven't already said...with the possible exception of saying The End. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm oh-so-close. I still have some paralysis, stubbornly hanging on to the lower left portion of my bottom lip, probably more noticeable to me than to anyone else. When I'm tired or stressed or try to talk too fast, it's much more noticeable. And, though I've mastered...for the most part...my Ss, Bs, and Ps, I'm still doing my speech therapy exercises with my F-words...:-). You remember? "Phil fell fifty feet."

In a related note, I picked up my new-new glasses this afternoon. Better than the last time around...not quite as good as I'd hoped. I am not experiencing the nauseating sensations like I was before finding out I had a condition known as anisometropia, so I'm guessing the correction in the right lens is on target. Still, I do feel some bit of discombobulation, for the lack of a better word. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever again will I be complacent about "normal" vision! Or normal anything, for that matter!!

I'm going to need all my energy to be focused...not on Bell's issues or vision problems...but on an upcoming trip. You know I have mentioned Miss Caroline, my former piano teacher? She and Momma were "Henning Friends," graduating from RHS, Class of '38. After Momma died, she and I kept up almost-weekly phone chats and regular correspondence, and she has become like a Second Mother, filling a hole in my heart. An only child of only children, she never married...so, no children, no grandchildren. I like to believe I have given her not only continuity with "her old life," but also a measure of feeling loved.

Alas, her body is wearing out. She's been battling a persistent kidney infection for weeks now, and she is growing weaker with each day. I think I have gotten my various health issues controlled enough to be trusted out on I-40...which is exactly where I plan to be Thursday morning. More on that in my next post, I'm sure. Remember, no regrets.

I'll sign off this post with the Documentation Photos, taken on Day #154...the beginning of Month #6. And, yes...before you ask. Those glasses are really old. Really, really old.
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A Couple of Rainbows, A Couple of Wrinkles

First, let's talk about something good and happy...something to make you smile. Like rainbows. Yesterday, when I came out of Speech Therapy, I was surprised to see that we had had a nice rain while I was in the rehab building at High Point Regional Hospital...in a room with no windows on the outside world. It was still sprinkling, but right at sunset, the sun was coming out...and you know what that meant: rainbow!

Imagine if you will: I'm driving home, north on Eastchester/Hwy 68, with my phone mounted to the top of my steering wheel, snapping as many shots as I could. For safety's sake, I pulled over to the side a couple of times...but stopping in the afternoon traffic in HP is almost as difficult as DWOOing (driving-while-otherwise-occupied, a la Lydel Sims, a writer for the Memphis Press-Scimitar, from the olden times. If you follow the link on his name to learn more about him, you can click through to one of his columns. And you will see one source of my writing style..:)

There are actually two rainbows in this picture...can you spot them? There's an "echo" rainbow to the left of the one you can clearly see in the middle of the photo.

OK, I'll be the first to admit that the pic itself isn't the best, clearest, crispest shot I've ever taken. Fuzzy would be a better description. And that leads me to the wrinkles.

Fuzzy is just the word I'd use to describe the way I see the world these days. And with good reason, too. You see, I got my new glasses' lens last week (same ol' frames), and I've been feeling sorta sick ever since.

I kept telling myself that I just needed to get used to these new specs...keep wearing them and grow into them. Blah, blah, blah. No matter what, though, I felt nauseated, off-balance, light-sensitive, disoriented...you get the picture, I'm sure. Kinda like having one long episode of vertigo, but without the spinning sensation. Yeah.

So, I rummaged through my dresser and finally found some really ancient glasses...at least 20-25 years old, I'm guessing. BBB glasses. You know: back before bifocals. I wore them to work in the garden on Saturday and Sunday, for light and debris protection more than to help my sight, but needed to switch to the new ones when I came indoors for "close work," like to see to cook, read, knit, etc. Just don't look up quickly toward the TV across the room! Ugh...

Big sigh. Time to head back to the eye dr. I wasn't sure if I could take any more bad news about my eyes, to tell the truth. You see, Dr. T had already said the my night vision problem was probably caused by a wrinkle in my new implant in my right eye, from the cataract surgery. "It happens sometimes. You're still healing, so it may 'resolve itself.'" It doesn't hurt, but it does cause me to see a "starburst" around lights after dark, or anytime my pupils are dilated...like when I look at headlights of oncoming cars, taillights, street lights, traffic signals etc. They all are distorted.

So what do they look like, you ask? Take a good look at that picture above. Notice the "beams" of light radiating downward from the oncoming headlights to the street at 6:00 (if the lights were all faces on clocks)? Take that effect, rotate it and lengthen it to 10:00 and 4:00 (on the "clock"), and you would be seeing exactly what I see.

That's Wrinkle Número Uno. The second Wrinkle is what is causing my issue with the "new" glasses. After a test or two, it seemed pretty evident at the eye doc's that I have a condition called anisometropia. Joy. Here's what Wikipedia says:

Anisometropia ( /ænˌaɪsəmɨˈtroʊpiə/ US dict: an·ī′·sə·mə·trō′·pē·ə) is the condition in which the two eyes have unequal refractive power; that is, are in different states of myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness) or in the extreme, antimetropia (wherein one eye is myopic and the other is hyperopic), the unequal refractive states cause unequal rotations thus leading to diplopia and asthenopia. Gross anisometropia is the difference of more than 2 diopters between the eyes.

Anisometropia can adversely affect ... clarity between the two eyes. The brain will often suppress the vision of the blurrier eye in a condition called amblyopia, or lazy eye.

The name is from four Greek components: an- "not," iso- "same," metr- "measure," ops "eye."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisometropia

And here's a link to some info from the UK: http://www.ouh.nhs.uk/patient-guide/leaflets/files%5C090427visionimbalance.pdf

So, what to do? Well, I doubt there is anything to do about Wrinkle #1, unless it resolves itself somehow. I won't choose another surgery (unless it gets a whole lot worse), so I'll have to adapt. That means limiting both nighttime driving as well as rainy-day trips.

Wrinkle #2 is a horse of a different color. The optician fiddled around with my prescription to get it to the point that I no longer have one eye 'a minus' (left eye) and one eye 'a plus' (right), giving me more balance to my unbalanced vision...a good temporary fix, at least until they do the cataract surgery on my left eye (which I do not need at present). The ophthalmologist readily agreed to the new scrip, saying only that I must remember that I won't be seeing as clearly out of the right eye. Actually it'll be better, since my only alternative was looking through these ancient specs...I could not continue to wear those new lens. So they have ordered me another set of lens with the new prescription. We shall soon see...we fervently hope!

So. Rainbows and Wrinkles. Such is life. Moving on...

Here's another picture of the Thursday rainbows. I'm going with "a sign of hope and good things to come;" how about you?

Bell's Palsy Update - Week 19

Another one of those "not much to report" updates, which is either good or bad, depending on perspective, I suppose. I continue to see infinitesimal improvements, as I continue to see my Speech Therapist.

I still have some lingering paralysis in my lower lip, left of the midline, which means I still have a crooked smile...and trouble pronouncing certain letters. (You'll be able to see it in my "Big Smile" Documentation photo below.) This week, she gave me a page of verbal exercises to do in order to help me with the F sound, which - due to that bit of paralysis - seems to be my main issue at the moment. Say them with me:

1. Phil fell fifty feet.
2. Funny Fanny makes fabulous fudge.
3. Fill the funnel with fat-free batter.
4. The fox fit under the farm's fence.
5. The form failed to fit the false face. (I'm not sure what that means...I just say it...:~\)

You get the idea, right? It sure beats saying ooh-ee-ooh-ee-ooh-ee and la-la-la-la-la.

Oh, did I tell you what happened the other day at therapy? My session was winding down to a close, and I was on the last exercise. It's one where I open my mouth as wide as I can and run my tongue around my lips, more or less in a circle...making allowances for the fact that my mouth doesn't open in a "circle" yet. On this particular day, Tori had moved the second electrode pad to a different spot on my chin, below my lower lip, in order to stimulate the paralyzed part. Well, I ran my tongue over my top lip and started to complete the first circle when...did you ever stick your tongue to the end of a battery when you were a child? Yeah. Same shocking sensation. Needless to say, she and I were both laughing so hard that we had to call it quits. Zapper, indeed...:~\

Now, you will probably think that jolt loosened a screw or two, but I probably have Bell's Palsy to thank for saving my life. No, really. Ready for this?

Remember how my year began...with my unorthodox shortcut down the stairs on my rear end? That little episode eventually sent me to the Back Dr., and the MRI machine, both of which diagnosed an annular tear in a herniated, lumbar disc. And in April, that led me to my first (of potentially four) epidural spinal injection, which was performed in the Dr.'s office and which was described in pitiful detail in an earlier post. You may recall I didn't want to ever go through that while awake again, so I had decided if I absolutely must have more ESIs, to request the next one(s) be done as an outpatient, under anesthesia...meaning at High Point Surgery Center.

Anybody keeping up with the National news lately? Meningitis ring a bell? Specifically meningitis caused by tainted meds, mainly used in epidural spinal injections? Well, dear readers, any guesses where one of those patients who died from receiving a tainted ESI got her injections this summer? Three guesses...and the first two don't count.

But, because I left HPNC for KY in late May, and subsequently got Bell's Palsy in late June, requiring me to take a large amount of steroids orally...and because oral steroids are available in your body as help for back pain as well as jaw pain, I didn't need another ESI for my back when I returned home in August. Ergo, because I got Bell's Palsy, I didn't get meningitis.

Of course, one could say that because Missy M broke her foot, I didn't get meningitis. True, but that doesn't give credit for the oral steroids (which possibly caused my cataract to accelerate, but I digress). And, let's face it. I've been searching for a silver lining about Bell's for months.

130 days, to be exact. Nearly 19 weeks. So, let's just go with "Bell's Palsy Saved My Life." That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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Time to document the wee bit of progress toward full recovery. Here they are...the Photos, "Smile!" and "Big smile!!"

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P. S. Good news from the ophthalmologist today. My right appears to have healed well, so he ordered new lens for me. I still need correction for the left eye, and I still need both bifocals and transition lens for both. But, good news is good news, right?

Arrrggghhh...Again

Well, I've got my Pirate on...again. Wearing the eye patch...again, only on my right eye this time.

Yep...had my cataract surgery today.

So, how did that go?

Here's what I shared with the Bros and SILs in an email tonight:

Well, glad that's done!

The surgery itself was much easier than I'd anticipated. The IV insertion, however, was every bit as traumatic as feared and then some. Oh well, me and my teeny, tiny uncooperative veins.

Since I had to be at the surgery center at 6:45 this morning, I was done by 9:00...and eating breakfast at Carolina's Diner by 9:30. All seemed well until we got home, and this massive softball-sized "headache" descended over my eye socket...and wouldn't go away, even with Advil and Tylenol.

Finally feeling better this evening. Eye is patched, so I can't tell anything about it. Dull remnant of headache. And my arms and hands and feet are tingling like they are "asleep." Not sure about that? See the dr at 8:00 tomorrow to remove eye patch. Hopefully it'll be smooth sailing after that.

And, my Bell's Palsy continues to respond positively to my twice-weekly visits to the Speech Therapist. The End of this nightmare is just around the corner...I can just feel it.

As I wrote to (cousin) MAF and shared in conversation with MG pal JA recently, I won't know what to do with myself when I can (1) see clearly out of both eyes (no cataract; no Bell's Palsy), (2) speak clearly and eat properly (no Bell's), and (3) stand up straight for a change (no back or vertigo problems)!

A girl can dream, right?!