I had booked a week off work (at last!) to go away in a caravan with my girlfriend on the South coast of England. The morning was chaos, doing most of our packing, I was running up and down stairs in my house carrying and moving things about, stressing about forgetting things.

We finally got away about 4pm, with a 3 hour or so drive to go, later than predicted but at least we had left!

Upon arrival I picked up the keys and when heading to the caravan had an annoying pulsing headache above my right ear. It was both painful and irritating so I just had a couple of Nurofen to fight it off and thought nothing of it. Strange thing was the nurofen took a while to act and didn't seem to really kill the pain.

I then pushed my hair back behind my ear (long parted fringe) and it felt sore on the upper part of my head, like it was sunburnt or something. I had a look and couldn't see any redness at all, yet it was painful to move my hair in that area.

I went to bed and thought nothing more of it.

All seemed ok this day, I still felt the soreness and took Nurofen for the occasional headache. I was out and about in Weymouth enjoying the seaside.

The headaches under control again with the Nurofen whenever they struck (am unable to remember much about times of the day etc.). I took the maximum amount of tablets you could have in 24 hours anyway. Strange thing was the headache was there about 4 hours after taking the nurofen. I've never suffered persistent headaches before and don't have migraines usually (my brother and mum have these). My girlfriend suffered from stress headaches, like migraines, which lasted a couple of weeks about the same time last year. We thought I had the same thing.

We went to an indoor water park place with water slides. All seemed ok although my contacts felt really uncomfortable in the evening and wasn't sure why.

This day we went to the New Forest and I felt a bit headachy again and had the nurofen but also felt very exhausted generally as I had done previous days. In the evening it started to feel like I had earache and the pain seemed mostly concentrated inside my ear.

Back to Weymouth and again, Nurofen at hand, the day went ok.

Nuisance earache was mostly being ignored. I really felt at this point it had to be an ear infection, simple. In the evening there was something a little strange though, I had fish and chips around about 7pm and when trying to take big mouthfuls I had like cramp under my lower jaw which was very painful. It kept recurring, a few seconds at a time when opening my mouth wide.

We headed back late that evening and finally arrived back about 1am.

Woke up with the same earache pains but something was different, the right hand side of my face felt numb. I thought it was just how I had been sleeping, but found it difficult to speak or move that side of my face at all. I could still blink though.

I decided at that point to call the NHS Direct phoneline which is for health advice to save unneccessary trips to the doctors.

I get all the questions to see if it is a migraine or meningitis and the nurse just says to get to a local 'drop-in centre' as soon as possible to have it checked out.

I suggested putting it off (as I had ignored the labels on Nurofen etc saying 'see your doctor if symptoms persist' etc). I called my girlfriends Dad who gave me a lift to the local Accident & Emergency dept. As I found it near impossible to move that side of my face I then mentioned to him about Bells Palsy but didn't remember my mum mentioning about pain or headaches.

The assessment nurse checks my pulse and blood pressure and confirms they are fine. She agrees with the Bells Palsy and after 2 1/2 hours a nurse calls me to see me. She takes a look in my ear and says it just seems to be Bells. She isn't sure what to do so goes off to see her boss.

Her boss comes in and suggests Prenisolone (5mg tablets, 30mg twice a day). She then gives me a letter to take to my doctor and advised me to see my doctor the following morning. This was a bit difficult as I was registered to a doctor near my parents, 200 miles away!

I go home and take 5 of the steroid pills that evening.