"FIRST PERSON: DON'T
SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF"

Published in American Health magazine, July/August, 1995 ©

         Up on the big movie screen, the soap opera producer played by Robert Downey, Jr., was trying to devise a way to diminish the female star's role. "We'll give her Bell's palsy!" Downey finally exclaimed. "It's a disfiguring disease."

         And there I sat, a black patch still covering my unblinking left eye, struggling for the first time with the suggestion that I was "disfigured." The rest of the "Soapdish" audience was laughing, but I wasn't.

         After all, "disfigured" is one of those terms, like "maimed" and "mutilated," that we usually reserve for the kind of cases Lon Chaney and Charles Laughton portrayed in old movies. In the few months since getting Bell's palsy, I had hardly thought of it in the same light as diseases they hold telethons for.

         The left half of my face had simply stopped functioning. A viral infection of the facial nerve had shut down the nerves and muscles on that side of my face and left them unusable, like a statue. Sure, it was frustrating and inconvenient, but it was hardly disfiguring.

         When I looked into the mirror, I saw only that half of my smile wasn't working anymore, one eye wouldn't blink and half my brow refused to knit in its usual fashion. But there was no hideous frozen grin, no face-distorting tic, though I have to admit my left eye did tend to squint a bit as it tried to blink.

         That is what I still see every morning, four years after the onset. And I still think Downey exaggerated.

         Of course, this curious affliction lends itself to exaggeration. When it first hit me that Tuesday, it seemed as if everyone at the small college where I teach was sure I was having a stroke.

         They nearly had me convinced, too, until I noticed that the paralysis wasn't affecting anything else on the left side of my body. Still, I cancelled my upcoming class to go to the doctor -- the only class, it turned out, I would ever miss because of this problem.

         The doctor made a quick diagnosis. "Bell's palsy," he said in that matter-of-fact, reassuring way of his. "It's pretty common." He seemed optimistic about the return of normality to the affected side of my face. "In 90% of cases," he reported, "it comes back in about six to eight weeks."

         That made me feel less apprehensive. It seemed just a matter of waiting for the rest of my functions to return. In the meantime, I had to wear an eye patch to protect an eye that couldn't protect itself, and I had to use artificial tears to keep the eye moist and clean. I got used to children asking, "Is that man a pirate, Mommy?"

         But though my ability to blink returned and I came out from behind the patch, nothing else budged on the left side of my face. When I went back to my doctor, he took one look and remarked, "Not good," then sent me off to see an ear, nose and throat specialist.

         Tests at the specialist's showed that the palsy had affected the bones and membranes inside my ear, which explained why I lurched through the house like a passenger going down the aisle of a speeding train.

         That also explained why sharp, loud noises such as the clattering of dishes were more piercing than before; the mechanism inside my left ear that dampened such sounds had been impaired too.

         So there I was, back in front of the mirror every day, facing the affliction named for a 19th-century surgeon and researcher, Sir Charles Bell, half of my face as pliable and animated as ever, the other half of it as immovable as the Great Wall of China. No matter how much I tried to contort that side of my face, no signs of recovery came.

         People -- bless them -- tried to be kind. My doctor told me how, after years of never seeing a Bell's palsy patient fail to recover facial functions fully, he now had two -- me and another man who had contracted the condition just a few days after I had. It made me wonder if a new, tougher strain of Bell's palsy had invaded central Indiana, but nothing ever showed up about it on the six o'clock news.

         One of my students tried to cheer me up by telling me her father had recovered fully from a bout of Bell's palsy. Unfortunately, she added sheepishly, "he had it three times."

         That story, combined with learning the condition was thought to be stress related, convinced me to make some changes in my life. I stepped down from the chairmanship of my department, easily my biggest stressor. I also tried to incorporate into my life the message I'd once seen on a sweatshirt: "RULE NO. 1: DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF. RULE NO. 2: IT'S ALL SMALL STUFF."

         The changes I made have done wonders for my disposition, if not for my lost facial functions. Only occasionally does my wife or boss not appreciate the fact that I lack a sense of urgency over a problem, such as replacing the screen door or getting a report done.

         And despite "Soapdish," I have refused to see myself as disfigured. For me, Bell's palsy doesn't make you hide in the closet. It's just something you learn to adjust to, if you happen to be in that 10% of sufferers whose faces never regain their normal functions.

         Since I'm a teacher, that acceptance has meant making an announcement to my classes at the beginning of each semester, explaining what's wrong with my face and encouraging students to let me know when they can't understand what I'm saying.

         The loss of control of one side of my mouth also makes eating and drinking an adventure. And when my wife invited me to blow out the candles on the birthday cake she had baked for me, the air went gushing out the corner of my mouth and the candles barely flickered.

         The other small joy I have lost is whistling. "You don't need to be whistling at the girls, anyway," is my wife's commonsensical response. I tell her whistling is like skipping rope: You outgrow it, but you still like to know you can do it if you want to.

         While the equilibrium difficulties have diminished, I still can't stand on one foot (which makes putting my pants on a bit tricky) or lean over too far without something to grab onto. It also has meant living in fear of those sobriety checkpoints the police set up along the highway. With uncertain balance, slurred speech and no hope of blowing up a balloon, I expect to go directly to the blood test or to the one permissible phone call to a lawyer.

         The specialist recommended a plastic surgeon to put back the natural curves and creases around my mouth and eye. But I thought I might end up with a bad "facial toupee." So I told the specialist that, since I didn't expect to be taking a screen test any time soon, I'd pass.

         Besides, I may be just right the way I am, at least for a soap opera. I certainly intend to hold onto my eye patch, just in case the casting call comes.

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 Copyright 1995 by Jerry Miller ©

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