2008 - What a start

And here was I thinking that 2008 would be the start of a great year.. HAH !! It looks like the Flying Spaghetti Monster is conspiring against me yet again !!

Started back at work on January 2 - On January 3 I started feeling... a bit off is the best I could describe. I had a painful shoulder due to sleeping the wrong way, but in addition to that I just "didn't feel right". I put it down to late nights - over the holidays an "early night" was something like 2am - so I didn't really stress about it.

Comes January 3 and my right eye is a tad irritated, and I was just not concentrating. I had also lost much of the muscular control over the right side of my face. No tingling in arms, etc, so I wasn't really (well, I *was* !@!) worried that I was having a stroke, so off to the Dr that afternoon - after googling the symptoms of course !!

Turns out I have Bell's Palsy, which is not all that uncommon - especially in us old farts..:-)

If you take a look at the Wikipedia entry for it there is more information (this is how I diagnosed it myself (and wasn't the GP pissed !!!) - this is an example of what my smile is currently like as a result (though this is not my picture !).

It's more bloody annoying than anything else - like speaking with 1/2 of your mouth numb from a dentist visit, you have to be careful not to spit at people, and eating and drinking is surprisingly hard to do without biting yourself (drinking coffee or beer through a straw just doesn't seem to cut it somehow).

Dr, not my normal GP but a good replacement thereof, has me on fairly high steroid doses for a week to bring down the inflamation around the nerve that is causing it, so it's a matter of waiting - not good for a person with little patience...:-)

Ah well, it's all good fun anyway...

Jon