Week 5 - Saturday
Well, not so much of the ‘interesting’ and ‘adventure’ today … more shock or trauma, really.
I awoke with the same problem with my eye. Carol pointed out my right eye isn’t blinking slower, it’s blinking more rapidly. I had thought it was slower because I could catch sight of my eyelashes sweeping up at the end of a blink - which I don’t normally see and hence assumed it was therefore slowed down.
In fact it is my left eye which is not blinking properly - and my right eye is blinking like mad to compensate or stimulate the other one. My left eye feels stiff to close and is leaking tears.
And the muscles around the left side of my mouth now feel ‘frozen’ and awkward to move.
I telephoned the hospital and spoke to a gastroenterologist doctor on duty (no hepatologists available on the weekend) who said it doesn’t sound like a side effect of the pegylated interferon but a general medical condition.
I felt a suspicion and disbelief. It is Saturday and medical services are over-run, under-staffed and inexperienced. And he wasn’t a hepatologist, so would he be familiar with the side-effects of interferon?
However, after a telephone call to someone whose medical expertise I do trust, I accept that it may well not be a side-effect but could be Bell’s Palsy - a condition I have heard of but about which have no real knowledge. I also accept I need specific medical advice for this.
I think overwhelmed is the right word to describe how I felt. I am already coping with a chronic disease, serious medication for it and a number of distracting and disturbing side-effects. Now, on top of that I have another illness simultaneously. It is all too much. While I walked about the house doing everyday things I kept thinking I could now have permanent facial paralysis. I will look ‘funny’ not just for the short term but possibly forever.
Carol checked out Bell’s Palsy on the web. I couldn’t bear to look and face what I would read.
I should say I have not already decided that I have Bell’s Palsy - even before I have seen a doctor, but I have to accept my collection of symptoms does seem to fit this condition, making it a likelihood.
I realised the pain in my neck which I reported last Monday (thinking it was from Yoga or another side-effect) is near my left ear. Carol pointed out that there are facial nerves near the muscle which was sore (and continues to hurt). I also realised I cannot move the muscles in my forehead above my left eye. Carol says these are all the things described very clearly on the Bell’s Palsy Information Site website.
Carol gave me a Reiki treatment this afternoon and afterward I felt more centred and in touch with a different perspective on all this. Yes, this isn’t a part of my treatment journey but it certainly is another feature of the journey I am on. I could have done without more difficulties - but difficulties I did expect to have to deal with and here they are!
October 17th, 2005 at 5:38 am
Ron, I was infected in 1986, diagnosed in 1993 and in 12/2003 experiences some vision problems, though I have never had treatment. Now since March 2005 I have been experiencing severe twitching (or tic) of my left eye lid. It lasted for one month. And since has spratically occurred as a milder tic and alternatively I have experiences pretty bad temple pain. Diagnosed as muscular or myofacial “something.”
Sincerely,