We were released from the hospital that
morning, and as soon as we got home, I made a Shakeology drink and headed to
the living room to eat and chat with his mom while my husband went into work
for the afternoon. While I was drinking my shake, I noticed that my tongue was
kind of numb and I was having difficulty speaking. I assumed it was because of
how cold the shake was, and just kept sipping away.
A few hours later, my contacts were
feeling really dry. When I walked into the bathroom to take them out, I knew
something was wrong. I couldn’t blink my right eye. In fact, the entire right
side of my face was paralyzed. It was just after 4:30 pm, and I immediately
called my doctor. I thought I might be having a reaction to the pain medicine
they had given me. The doctor sent me to the emergency room… I called my
husband and told him to meet us there.
As we were driving to the emergency room,
I had a million things going through my head… the most important being what to
do with my daughter. At 5 days old, there was no way I was going to bring her
into the hospital and expose her to who-knows-what kind of disease! My
mother-in-law and sister-in-law decided to wait in the car with the baby while
we went in.
The emergency room was awful. Literally,
the worst experience of my entire life. For the next five hours, I was
separated from my nursing infant. They wouldn’t let me leave to go nurse her
and told me to just bring her in – um, no!
I was fortunate to not have to wait in
the waiting room – they led me to my room pretty quickly. They put a bunch of
stickers on my chest and connected me to a heart monitor. The doctor came in
and told me that he thought I had Bell’s Palsy, and that they wanted to do a
scan of my head. A few minutes later, a couple of VERY young-looking staff came
in to try and hook me up to an IV and draw my blood. NOT A CHANCE, I told them… NOT A CHANCE. They
looked at me, completely bewildered, and left the room. (Remember I’m 5-days
post-partum with LOTS of hormones!)
Around that time, we realized that both
of our cell phones were dying, so my husband ran and grabbed his sister’s phone
and plugged his into the car. The waiting was excruciating, because each minute
of waiting meant a minute away from my daughter, and I knew she was getting
hungry with nothing to eat. We decided to call our family doctor. He was SO
helpful! He told us we could just go home and come see him tomorrow if we
needed to get out of there.
Right as we were about to leave, they
came to get me for the scan. My husband and his mom decided to take our
daughter home, while his sister waited with me. When we got to the scanning
area, the nurse wheeled my bed into a line of 8 or 9 people. I called my
husband and updated him, and he said “just leave”. So I got up, out of the bed,
and began walking down the hall. I saw a nurse and asked her what I needed to
do to leave – that I needed to get home to my infant and didn’t have time to
wait around for the scan. She thought I was nuts and moved me to the front of
the line!
After the scan, I headed back to the original
room and waited for the results. 30 minutes later, it was confirmed that I had Bell’s
Palsy (and not a stroke)! The doctor wrote out a prescription and told me that
he wasn’t sure I would be able to nurse while taking it. We again called our
family friend and he said “don’t do anything – just come in to see me tomorrow.
I will work with your OB, and we will find a solution that works so that you can
continue to nurse your baby.” Those words were music to my ears!
My husband’s sister drove me home, where
I immediately scrubbed down, changed into some fresh clothes, and nursed my
daughter!
The next day, we went to our family
doctor and found a prescription that would allow me to continue nursing. For
the first 10 days, I would have to wait 4 hours after taking the medication to
nurse, so I pumped in the morning, then took the medicine and gave her a bottle
while I pumped and dumped. It was exhausting, but SO worth it!
While the Bell’s Palsy was something I wouldn’t
wish on anyone (I couldn’t blink my eye, so I had to fill it with drops every
20-minutes. I couldn’t smile, so there are no pictures of me with my daughter
that month. I couldn’t drink with a cup, because it spilled out the right side
of my mouth. I had to hold my mouth closed to brush my teeth and use mouthwash),
it actually drew me SO close to the LORD.
I remember sitting in my daughter’s room
most nights during those four weeks and just bawling, calling on the Lord to
please heal me… asking him to make me strong, and to lift this burden. I know
my burden was light compared to most people’s, but I was exhausted and
defeated. But here’s the cool part. I depended completely on God, and He drew
me so close to Him. I could literally feel him comforting me while I would cry
and cry and weep. I knew that He would take away my pain. And while I didn’t
know when or if He would heal me (it can take 3 weeks or 3 months or 3 years or
never to heal from Bell’s Palsy – they don’t know exactly what causes it and
every case is different) – I just trusted that whatever the reason I was going
through this, I would glorify Him.
I can’t tell you how many people reached
out to me during that time to let me know that they had experienced the same
thing, or that they knew someone who had. Everyone was SO generous with us, and
we are so very grateful to all of our friends and family, as well as to the
doctors.
And while I dramatize and complain about
how awful my hospital experience was, I am so very thankful to the doctors who
did their best to get me out of there quickly, and to the nurse who helped move
me up the line, and to God, the Great Physician, for giving them wisdom to know
what to do. And I’m also SO very
thankful for an amazing mother-in-law and sister-in-law who loved on us and
held our baby and ministered to us during a very difficult season! I honestly
don’t know what we would have done without them!
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