I noticed that my jaw was hurting.

My husband and I went out to see one of our favorite bands play that Saturday and although the show was great my jaw and neck pain really kept me from enjoying myself. We had drinks with friends after and I came home and slept in until after noon the next day.

That evening was a Sunday and I noticed that things were tasting strange when we had dinner. Not only that but my tongue felt weird. Almost like I had dental work done… like when you are coming back to life after Novocain. I decided that I should call my doctor in the morning and see if I could get in to see her as soon as possible.

It was the next morning that my life got turned upside down and this is where I will begin my story. I hope that by chronicling my experience with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, I will help and or give hope to other suffers.

I woke up this Monday morning like any other Monday morning. I am not at all a person that enjoys the first three hours of my day and I really need my coffee before I am even close to being able to function at a normal level. So I groggily got out of bed and went to the bathroom to get ready for work. I turned on the shower and brushed my teeth. It was when I spit in the sink that I noticed something was wrong. I spit all over myself! I have been brushing my teeth for many years now and I have the spitting in the sink part down. I looked up in the mirror with a quizzical expression on my face and only half of my face was looking quizzical. The rest of it was just hanging there all droopy.

I immediately though that I had stroke in my sleep and became hysterical but soon realized that the rest of the right side of my body was working fine and I was thinking very clearly so a stroke was unlikely. I called the advice nurse at my doctor’s office and she got me in right away. I called my work and my boss was very supportive and told me to call as soon as I knew what was going on.

I actually see a nurse practitioner and she is great. When I went in she had not seen anyone with Bell’s palsy before but she was sure that this is what I had and she called in the doctor that supervises her and had him check me out. I was given acyclovir to start right away and was also told to start prednisone. I have taken this before and I do not tolerate it at all. I become violently ill when I take it. We debated it for a while but she said that if I threw it up as soon as I took it, it probably would not do much good anyway.

I woke up Tuesday morning and my face had gotten worse. I had absolutely no movement at all. My lower eyelid was drooping and my mouth drooped terribly. The doctor had told me that it would gradually get worse over 48 hours and then would be as bad as it was going to get. I have been in shock and tired this week. I just never thought that this could happen to me and I would have never added up all of the strange things that were happening to me in June and think that this would be the outcome! This stinks for sure.