Living with facial pain:

Anybody who knows me knows how much I love football. Unfortunately football is played outside in the winter. After my second episode when I was 21, my face became sensitive to the cold and it got worse after my third episode. Spending any amount of time outside when it was cold caused agonising pain. Sitting outside for 2 hours to watch a game of football was not going to happen.

I was prescribed medication to help with the nerve pain because it was stopping me from sleeping but I could only take them at night as they made me really drowsy. When it was windy was the worst, and made my whole face feel like it had seized up.

When I finally got seen by a specialist, 11 years after I first developed facial palsy, and started a programme of physiotherapy and Botox to help manage the synkenesis and hypertonicity things started to improve. After 3 years of treatment, I only sometimes get facial pain and it's not the agonising pain that it was, and although the cold still makes my face feel tight, I can now sit outside for 2 hours every other week to watch the football - which is mostly a good thing!