What I look like when I listen (a few reflections on my face)

An Eric Gillet photo from Cheryl's wedding rehersal

I like this picture.  I posted some of Eric's pictures of Cheryl and Miguel before their wedding (he took their engagment pictures, which were amazing, and his work is captivating, to say the least).  In chatting with him before the rehersal, I told him I have a special nack for ruining pictures, and he saw first hand after not realizing how serious I was, that I do have an uncanny ability to close my eyes and contort my face as a shutter closes.  The above photo, though, I like. 

My face was tired a lot that weekend and there is a fair amount of asymmetry in my face in other pictures, and now in general, even compared to earlier in my recovery.  I also discovered that I have no control over my 'lesser' neck muscles on my Bell's side.  I don't know if this is new or if I just didn't notice all this time.  They aren't muscles I think I need for anything.  But, by the way it feels to smile these days, there may be some other muscles that are either regressing or that did not heal the way I thought they did.

Most people would never know now by looking at me that I had Bell's.  It's visible in some photos, espcially when my face is tired or when I couldn't tell my Bell's side wasn't smiling, so I didn't correct it.  In this picture, though, it is hardly even visible to me.

I don't spend time thiking about it from the perspective of outright vanity, and interestingly that didn't even bother me a whole lot when I didn't know if I would heal.  Frankly, I care more when I occasionally get a zit in various ridiculous looking spots on my face.  I rarely spend time on my appearance.  I thought about it in terms of attractiveness to my husband, though, I guess, as I healed.   But not in the way you think about your hair or acne or crooked teeth when you're a teenager and you (truly, though not consciously) believe your value and acceptance are dependent on those things. 

It worried me more with my kids and with interpersonal communication.  People responded to me very, very differently when I couldn't smile.  Responses ranged from akwardness to outright hostility.  The differences in my face now impact interactions less, of course, but there are still subtle differences, both in my face and in the way I feel during conversations where subtle facial cues are important. 

This photo captures how I feel a lot of the time around people.  Not entirely sad, but someimes at least a little separate...working at connecting.

Like many major illnesses, Bell's leaves most of us a little wiser and more grateful than we were before, but also just unexplainably different.

8:48 pm, October 22....my third recovery

Me dancing at Cheryl and Miguel's reception,
photographed by my daughter

At that moment, a wave of certainty washed over me.  One big, invigorating, epiphany-style, see clearly through the CFS-fog wave.

I have little moments like this from time to time, but three moments so far (including this one, at a random moment during Cheryl's wedding reception) have brought monumental waves of certainty that I will be okay.

The first was watching the sea turtles the day we first saw them this June in Waikiki and the second was watching them roll in the waves at the same spot in September.  These moments are gripping, like the rays coming down from the top of a fancy cathedral and falling into the hands or onto the faces of statues of angels and saints when you are a twelve year old being raised catholic, or focusing on a rare species you are dying to see and having it cross your path just then.

Dogs and humans in sickness and health

I was watching a Nova series on the evolution and domestication of dogs and they spoke about facial communication and the ability of dogs to interpret gestures and facial expressions.  Dogs read emotions, which any dog owner knows, but it is interesting that they use the right side of the face first to read cues.  Humans do, too.  We are left biased in our gaze, drawing us naturally to the right side of a persons face....leading us (and dogs) to use the right side of the face first for reading emotion.

This is particularly fascinating given that it is the right side of my fact that was paralyzed.  This makes me wonder if people in general have a harder time reading me still, given that there are subtle lag times and differences on that side of my face.  And I wonder if it affects how Sweetie reads me.  She seems to think I'm mad at her lately.

I have to correct Greg sometimes in his interpretations of what I'm feeling or whether or not I'm angry about something. I am tired still a lot and CFIDS does not enhance people's social grace, so I chalked it up to poor communication on my part, but i think its very possible that i've lost more than i thought on the bells side of my face.  So it makes sense that Sweetie's been confused over time.  She has been worried about me at all of the appropriate times, so I still feel like she reads me better than most people.

So I have been a little nervous lately that she has been hanging very, very close to me.  It's been making me nervous.  I am afraid that she knows that either she or I am sick.

Researchers are finding similar interactions between dog and owner as human mother and newborn.  They have been looking at oxytocin as playing the same role between dogs/owners as moms/nursing infants....oxytocin levels rise in the blood of dog and owner after periods of petting and play.

If you have a dog you are less likely to have a heart attack and 3 to 4 times more likely to survive one.  But dogs began increasing our odds of survival even more directly thousands of years ago, when we were still hunter gatherers, by making humans better hunters.  This makes a lot sense to me.  After we adopted Sweetie from a shelter, I was seeing the woods differently at work...seeing tracks differently, as if she were with me.  I think that in a addition to assisting us with logistics in terms of hunting and herding, they help us heighten and hone our senses.

Like humans, wolves were social animals that hunted in daylight, which was not the case for many other species, making domestication a fairly natural and mutually beneficial outcome.  It turns out that dogs may think more like humans than any other species, including chimps, according to a cognitive psychologist featured in the special who is researching the responses of chimps and dogs to gestures such as pointing.  Dogs cue into social cues very naturally, noticing things as subtle as the direction of our gaze.  We may have evolved our eyes (almond shape, different amounts of white on each side when our gaze shifts) specifically for social communication.


So it seems like the things missing in my face may be too subtle for me to ever notice, but it is very possible that Sweetie does.

My Double-Edged Spoons

I just a read a blog on Wellsphere about the spoon theory (a chronically ill woman’s now-famous description to a friend about living with limited reserves).  A rush of memories came back related to my own sharing of the spoon theory and some crazy twists and turns that followed in my story that probably differ from what most people experience when they share it.

After I was diagnosed with CFS, a childhood friend with MS told me to "watch my spoons".  It took me a while to finally ask her what that meant.  After reading it for the first time, I referenced it often to help describe to people what I was going through.

The only down side was sharing it at work.

I found a 'weblog' from my third month with Bell's Palsy, 8/14/10

Photo from about day 11 (I couldn't close my eye yet, but you could already see a dimple coming back and a crease or two---the crooked smile is due to the right side of my face being paralyzed by Bell's palsy in May 2010):

My First 3 Months: progression, emotions (guilt), soap box