Bell’s Palsy and the Battlefield of my Mind
I was going for physiotherapy. My appointment was at 12 noon. I had gotten to Egbeda, where the hospital was, in good time. The only snag was that I had not gotten the balloon the physiotherapist told me to bring along. I trudged through Egbeda Market, looking for where to buy the balloon, but the market was no place for balloons. There were better things to sell than silly balloons. Who uses them these days anyway?
Before I could give up my search, heavy rains started, a continuity of what had wet the ground earlier in the morning. I jogged (read ran) for cover. Fresh boys like us, we no dey rush cold. Na cold dey rush us. I had Bell’s Palsy. If you knew how I came to have it, you would understand why I ran. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s talk about the run for cover.
I saw a shop that had a verandah. I ran there and asked the shop owner if I could stay under her roof till the rain abated. She obliged. She told her children occupying the bench opposite her to make room for me to sit. After sitting, I tried to observe my surroundings. The woman was selling ladies’ clothing. I felt her shop was too far behind the main market for her to be making much sales.
What caught my attention were her four beautiful children. The four should range between ages six to two. The eldest was the only female among them. I fell in love with the family instantly. The last child kept staring and staring until he suddenly started smiling. I smiled back, forgetting that Bell’s Palsy had given me a crooked smile — my right cheek spreading wide, my right eye brightening up, heralding an extensive facial wrinkle. The left side of my face, on the other hand, had nothing going on. It was as still as a straightfaced ivory sculpture. No cheek movement, no glint in the eye, no wrinkle in the forehead. It was the palsied side.
When the boy saw my smile, he stopped smiling back, his eyes staring quizzically at me. His mother noticed too. She stared briefly at me and looked away. One by one, the other kids looked at me and looked away. Nothing was really said during my brief stay in that shop. But a lot was said with their eyes, and I was sure when I leave, a lot would be said. The kids would ask their mother, “Why does that stranger have a weird smile?” She would probably try to explain it away, and that would be that. I wished she would ask me before I left so I could explain. I always feel the need to explain it, especially when I meet an old friend or a new one. When my lips are bent in a weird way, and most words that tumble out of my mouth are unintelligible; when I try hard not to smile or when laughter comes uninvited and I have to cover my face, I feel the need to explain, “I wasn’t always like this.” But I learnt to kill that feeling. Truth is, I owed no one an explanation.
As I left the shop after the rain subsided, I felt I had lost something. The thing with palsy — any form of palsy — is that it messes with your head. You may not feel any pain (in my case, I felt some pain) but the fact that you cannot do the things you used to do, that you now cannot control your own body, will make you depressed and feel hopeless— a sickness of the body becoming a sickness of the mind.
If you’re not medically inclined, you must be wondering what Bell’s Palsy even means. It’s not typhoid or malaria. It’s not one of the “popular guys” in the world of illnesses as we know them in these parts. In fact, according to statistics, only one in five thousand people ever experience it in their lifetime. Just my luck that I would be one of the “ones.” I even read that Angelina Jolie was one of them too. That knowledge has not in any way made me feel better. She’s Angelina Jolie. She has access to all the medical facilities money can buy. She can even afford a face job if her face refused to go back to the way it used to be.
There are so many assurances that the face goes back to the way it used to be, though. Bell’s Palsy is a condition that causes temporary weakness or paralysis of the muscles on one side of the face. In my case, It is my left side.
Although, I suspect that whatever ailment caused it was already in the body waiting to manifest, what catalyzed it was my exposure to intense cold at a hotel in GRA, Ikeja some days earlier. I had rushed down to the hotel for a training session I was facilitating for some businesses. Once I got settled, I noticed I was shivering from cold. I could not sit still without an involuntary jerk. There was nowhere to go. The Air Condition was everywhere in the hotel and my session was about to start.
I sauntered down to the reception to get a cup of coffee. That steadied me a bit for my session. I finished, and that was that. I forgot all about it.
And then, the migraine came calling. I woke up on a Monday morning, feeling like I had been given a head-shattering blow by Thanos on the left side of my head. The pain was spasmodic, but its effect on my activities for the day was constant. I couldn’t concentrate.
I tried to fix it with painkillers. It subsided and continued again the next day. Another dose of painkillers. Rinse. Repeat. I woke up Wednesday morning with an unmoving left side of the face. That was when I finally agreed with my body that something was amiss.
Have I learnt my lessons? Yes, of course. I know that no matter how I try to form Jagaban, my body and extremely cold conditions are two parallel lines that should not meet. When they meet by any chance, I should take precautions to mitigate the cold. I learnt that when my body speaks, I should listen. I have also fellowshipped with the truth that I am not my body, and it should not dictate how I felt about my essence at any point in time.
Update to this post.
I just wanted to post my notes during the Bell Palsy period here. It happened February-March 2019. I’m fine now. I can smile, wink, wrinkle my forehead, blow a balloon and do all the seemingly mundane things that I couldn’t do earlier. You never know how those little things are important to you until you can’t do them.
