I’ll never know if the risk I took helped Jolie
TWO days before my 27th birthday i woke up with a pain in my left jaw and a slightly droopy eyelid. Putting it down to a bad night’s sleep i went to work as usual, wondering why i couldn’t get my eyeliner to sit right.
it wasn’t until i opened my mouth to address a meeting and discovered i was slurring my words that i realised something was seriously wrong.
At A&e i was rushed into a ward, strapped up to a heart monitor and examined by several doctors. By this point my face was paralysed down one side and i think they thought i was having a stroke. That’s what i thought too. i was terrified. Yet eight hours, four doctors, two hospitals and one heart scan later i was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, a virus of the facial nerve that causes facial paralysis and gives one the unwelcome ability to smile like a sneering elvis.
Not having raised six children, won an Oscar or married someone while wearing a vial of their blood around my neck i never thought i’d have anything in common with Angelina Jolie, but this week the actress revealed she, too, has suffered from Bell’s palsy. She blames stress and credits acupuncture with her recovery.
Bell’s palsy is a horrible thing to have. it affects your appearance, making your face lopsided and weird looking. i couldn’t close my left eye for three weeks and had to wear an eye patch. For the first week i couldn’t blink. it is also painful, particularly around the jaw area, and can damage your hearing. More than ten years later i am still acutely sensitive to loud noises in my left ear.
No one knows quite what causes Bell’s palsy. Stress, however, is believed to be a factor, and it certainly played a part in my illness. i might not have been a single mother to six negotiating a divorce from Brad Pitt, but at the time i was working 14-hour days and doing a three-hour round trip commute. i was rundown and permanently knackered.
What i didn’t realise, though, was that my diagnosis was about to enshrine me in medical history. it just so happened that at the time i fell ill, Scotland was in the midst of the world’s biggest ever study into the treatment of Bell’s palsy.
WHiLe at the hospital i was asked if i wished to participate, and told i would be given two sets of pills. They could contain the steroid prednisolone, acyclovir, a drug that treats the herpes virus (thought to be a possible cause), or placebos. i wouldn’t know until after the study. Happy birthday to me!
i agreed, a decision i have wrestled with since (what if i’d been given the placebos? What if i’d been permanently paralysed as a result?) and it wasn’t until the Scottish Bell’s Palsy Study was published three years later that i received a letter telling me that i had been prescribed the steroids, which thanks to this groundbreaking study had been proved by far the most efficacious treatment and the one doctors most prescribe today. i could tell. i was completely recovered.
There is a point here. While i think it is admirable that Jolie has chosen to speak publicly about her condition (‘Bell’s what?’ was a question i got a lot at the time) it is disingenuous to credit acupuncture with her ‘full recovery’ without clarifying whether or not she also received any drug therapy. in the hours after her revelation internet searches for the condition spiked, and my fear is that in the age of Dr Google, belief that acupuncture is the only way to treat it will spike too.
Not everyone is as lucky as me or Jolie. Some people with Bell’s never fully recover, left instead with permanent facial paralysis. i agreed to take part in the study because i knew that although i was taking a risk, one day down the line, other sufferers would benefit. i wish i knew if Jolie was one of them.