The Curse of Bells Palsy Eye Pain

So yesterday I said that my eye had been great from when I got up and it had been pretty good all day. Now I don’t know whether it was just bad luck of because I had been outside and gone to help with the horse yesterday evening but by 8pm my eye was bad. As per usual the eye seems to get sore in the outside corner during the day. I am putting the Viscotears Liquid Gel in it every hour, and being quite generous with it too but I still seem to get the same sort of problems developing later in the day.

General Eye Issues with Bells Palsy

• General irritation develops forcing me to touch the eye and shut it manually increases later in the day.
• It starts to feel like there is very fine dirt in the eye, kind of scratchy feeling especially in the corner.
• It seems that the eye lid starts to stick to the eye ball and get pulled down slightly which is irritating.
• It takes longer for the eye to calm down after putting the gel in.

As I said the irritation got really bad so I decided to do an eye bath with Optrex, which I had used successfully the day before. I washed my eye which stung, but then it seemed that it moved something which was then sticking into my eye. It must have been hurting as my other eye was creating tears for the faulty one! So I gave it another Optrex Eye Bath – to no avail. So I decided to try and wash whatever it was out under the tap. OH MY GOD that was a mistake. I was almost on my knees in pain. It was as if I had used toilet cleaner not plain water to wash my eye.

So I am interested to find out whether either the gel (unlikely) or the Optrex reacts with either the water or the water additives like chlorine. After I got off my knees I just had to cover both my eyes and lie on the bed for a while. I waited 15 minutes and then re-applied the Viscotears. I think whatever was in my eye was still there but I had lost the will to remove it and just tried to go to sleep.

Sorting the Eye Out

So today the eye is better but not as good as it was yesterday morning. I am therefore worried about how it will be feeling by 8pm tonight! I am not going out today, which I think will help, but given that my cornea is looking very red on the utside corner I have decided to visit the local optician and get her to have a look and perhaps recommend some alternative careplan. I would go back to the hospital to save myself the £36 but I don’t think I would get an appointment for a week and given how late they run on their schedule it would probably cost me a lot more in terms of lost work time!

I will update the blog after I have visited the optician on Saturday with any interesting information to share.

Facial Paralysis Progress Pictures

I am again thinking that the exercises on my face are loosening up the muscles on the immobile side and then these are being pulled across by the ‘good side’ go giving my face a lopsided look. What do you think? Perhaps I will post a larger image of the neutral face for review tomorrow.

PS Thanks to the NHS for cheering me up!

They did this by sending me through a leaflet titled

Face to Face Interaction – Top Tips on Becoming Disfigurement Confident

Nice, I wasn’t until then considering myself as disfigured!