Surrender – Part 1

Thursday, May 31, 2018 is the day I woke up like any other day to get ready for work…feed my dog, Sophie Bear, pick out my outfit for the day, shower, dress, fix my hair and brush my teeth.

It wasn’t until I brushed my teeth that I realized something was wrong with my face. I leaned over the sink to spit out the toothpaste and my mouth wouldn’t work right. My lips went sideways, I couldn’t pucker to spit. Weird, I thought. Maybe I did that wrong?

That was my thought. I spit wrong. Even though I’ve been spitting toothpaste in the sink for years. How does someone forget how to spit?!

So, I tried again. Same thing. My lips went sideways, I couldn’t pucker to spit.

That’s when I really examined myself in the mirror. What’s wrong?!?! My heart started beating a little faster and I was becoming more alarmed by the minute.

I, then, realized my left eye wasn’t closing as firmly as my right. I tried squeezing as hard as I could, and the left side wouldn’t squeeze shut.

What.was.wrong?!?!

Stroke was the word that entered my mind.

I flew out of the bathroom to the mirror in the living room and looked there as if I thought changing mirrors would change the function of my face.

I tried puckering my lips and they just looked weird, my pucker wasn’t centered. I looked at my eyes again and tried squeezing them shut. The right eye felt strong and squeezed shut as my muscles commanded it to, the left eye was lacking. I was scared! Jeff and I commute into work together and I told him to go without me, I was going to the Urgent Care.

Bell’s Palsy or a stroke?

Among all the frantic thoughts in my head, thoughts of my mom were there too.

She suffered from having several mini strokes in her last months.

Was this happening to me? What was going on?

When I pulled up to the Urgent Care, of course, they don’t open until 8:00 am and I arrived at 7:15 am. Great! Now I get to sit in my car and let my thoughts swirl in my head about what is happening to me.

Those minutes ticked by so, so slowly. It was excruciating. Finally, the doors opened. When I was signing in at the front desk, the nurse asked me for the symptoms I was experiencing. As soon as I got out of my mouth that the left side of my face wasn’t working right, she immediately sent me to triage.

This only concerned me more and it validated that something was wrong. My body was rebelling against me and it came out of nowhere.

The doctor followed right behind me into triage and ran several physical tests like asking me to squeeze her fingers to check for weakness in my hands and arms.

She asked several questions like did I feel weakness on one side of my body and asking me to repeat phrases.

The only other symptom I had was the left side of my tongue had gone numb the day before. I couldn’t taste on that side, but I didn’t think much of it.

The doctor then told me her diagnosis was Bell’s Palsy.

“Do you know what Bells Palsy is?”, she asked.

“No. Can it be healed?”, I replied in response.

The doctor was very gracious in assuring me she had experienced Bell’s Palsy about 15 years before and often it comes out of nowhere, but it can be caused by a virus that attacks the facial muscles usually on just one side of the face. She urged me, though, to go to an emergency room to get an MRI to rule out the possibility of a stroke.

I left Urgent Care in a daze. I was frantic, heart still racing, yet calm at the same time. Jeff was blowing up my phone, but I didn’t want to talk.

I was trying to process what my body was doing and how I was going to spring into action.

If you know me well, you know I’m a person of action.

I do not take things laying down. I’m proactive to the nth degree.

All that sounds great, the being proactive stuff, right? Well, yes and no.

Here’s the negative part of being so proactive and feeling the need to be in control…I don’t let others care for me.

At this point, I’m shutting Jeff out because I don’t know how to deal. I don’t know how to process what’s going on with me and I’m shutting him out.

When I finally answer the phone when he calls, he says he’s packing up at work and will meet me at the ER.

“No.” I tell him. “I will go to the ER, but I’m going into work first.”

Weird reaction, right? I know, thus is the conundrum of me. I am a soldier in the mist of my world falling apart. Pushing onward, not letting myself feel, just doing.

Jeff is frantic on the other end of the phone and I start crying as I knew I would and I told him I had to go. I don’t deal well with not knowing what to do. I was struggling to control my own emotions and I didn’t have room for anyone else’s emotions even though Jeff was certainly entitled.

I drove to work. When I got to the parking garage, I pulled out my makeup that I hadn’t put on yet. Tears were still rolling down my cheeks. I pulled the mirrored visor down and looked at my face.

My face was betraying me. Even in crying, the left side of my face was not distorting with emotion. It was sort of frozen which made me cry more.

What was happening to me? I dried up my tears as much as I could and put on my makeup. Putting on eye makeup was strange and made the tears start to roll again because I couldn’t close my left eyelid to put on eye shadow.

I only checked in at work, talked with my boss, told him what was going on and cried tremendously while telling him. I told him about my mom and the strokes that she had and how concerned that made me. Hearing the word Stoke in reference to yourself is a hard pill to swallow.

Jeff met me at my office and we soon left for the ER for the MRI and had the diagnosis of stroke ruled out. I had Bells Palsy and I would experience the symptoms for weeks.

The above is a play by play of how I spent my Thursday morning and afternoon of May 31, 2018.

This was my first time experiencing a sickness that wasn’t curable in a few days with a round of antibiotics.

Stay tuned…next week I’ll share how this sickness tested my faith.