Bell's palsy: One Loyola patient's story

I was talking a little funny, anything with B and P didn't really come out and they didn't like that I couldn't pronounce them and the next morning it was worse and my smile was maybe half as much as I liked the smile I left. The side was at the beginning when I was in my worst phase sleeping at night I had to tape my eyes shut when I drank from a cup it wouldn't stay in my mouth and dripped a little out of the corner everyone was very casual and almost flippant about it , where they said you just have to give it time to go away and 6 weeks after going through a very simplistic therapy there was no movement in her face, so at that time you know, the fear that she would live with this for the The rest of his life was going through my head and it was a matter of digging deeper and investigating a little more.

Dr. Leonetti knew the other options available to Bell Paly besides simply waiting. she came in for a second opinion she was a very depressed young woman Belle's poliy is also known as idiopathic facial paralysis um it causes acute onset facial weakness on one side uh it is believed to be due to a virus that we always tell the

patient

and the family that there is a window of opportunity, so if the phasal nerve has been paralyzed and we have passed 3 months, this operation is not useful. On the other hand, we don't want to start too early because we know that 85% of

patient

s will recover.

Within a month, in Audrey's case, she did not recover, there was no movement, so we proceeded with decompression. This surgery is just a pressure relief on the nerve so it's not that invasive, the recovery is very limited when I first did it. I regained movement a few days after surgery and I was very excited. I started calling my mom shouting her name and I had to show her exactly where I could move and it was really exciting knowing that she could move my face after her. like the 3 months of not being able to if there was ever a medical disorder that required acceptance from the patient, therapist, and surgeon.

The Bell pause is a classic example and if the physical therapist is not specially trained in the area of ​​facial treatment. retraining the results won't be as good and how does it feel when you can start to show that the work and the effort that they are putting in every day will create changes that will increase people's motivation and with Audrey a lot of that was. with closing your eyes and then when you were able to start smiling, it's actually just a few exercises that are done over and over again every day at home, so it takes a very motivated patient and relax with the therapy.

Lisa and working with Her um on various movements of the face Audrey has been able to get up to 90% now and it's been less than a year and she's made that improvement very quickly, it's been an almost daily improvement when you see it it's very uh It's gratifying seeing patients like Audrey who were very depressed and saddened and almost in a way protected themselves from the fact that their face was paralyzed and then seeing that first sign of movement and you know it's just the beginning and that nerve can regenerate and recover. Up to a year after the surgical procedure, they are affected for the rest of their life with improved facial function oh