Bells Palsy
Bells Palsy
Case submitted by Paul Lowe
PATIENT DETAILS
Age / Gender: Female 51 years.
Diagnosed: suffering from Bell’s Palsy since two weeks ago.
General condition:
Otherwise in quite good health, with a good diet. Her mouth was stretched into a high fixed grin on left side, left eye doing slow blinks. Right eye was glassy, unable to blink, and getting very dry and irritated. She also has facial pain, ear canal pain (she feels as if there’s an infection there - unconfirmed), severe neck tension, visual problems and hyperacusis (severe reaction to noise).
Symptoms had begun during and immediately after an acupuncture treatment (she was being treated for aches between her scapulae and in her lower lumbar) following a period of great stress. She was first treated by her doctor with standard BP treatment of 8 days of steroids and anti-viral drugs, but these just made her feel toxic and did nothing for her BP symptoms. She has had cranio-sacral treatment which helped alleviate the symptoms a little, and acupuncture, which she felt had only made things worse again and also left her with a lot of tension at the back of her neck.
First treatment:
She was treated throughout with a Scenar-Cosmodic EX735Ag Modific prototype.
She seemed tense and understandably self-conscious, so I first used some relaxation techniques before applying the new Modific in 3 Pathways for a total of 47 minutes, which was the entire treatment, Slider 5 throughout. She’s an enlightening client to have: the combination of her having a complex neurological condition like Bell’s Palsy, and being a very experienced shiatsu and cranio-sacral therapist, means that she can describe her sensations, and the power of the Modific device to generate complex changes, in precise detail.
While treating her upper thoracic area, she reported involuntary spinal twisting, but treating on the spine at C5/C6 was when major sensations began. It took 38 minutes to dose, and after 20 minutes, some of the full bars were totally cosmodic. This is what she reported during this final dose at the back of her neck: “There’s involuntary movement in my jaw (even from the back I could see her jaw moving laterally to a marked degree). The pain has disappeared in my right temple area. My face is feeling very hot and it’s relaxing. An old (painful) vision has come up from when I was 5 years old. I feel a lot of emotion-related pain in my neck. The pain around my ear has gone. Now the jaw is slowly unwinding. The strangled feeling in my neck is going away. In my right ear and TMJ there are waves of pain and no pain, and they feel very, very hot. Now I have no pain – for the past two weeks I’ve had a feeling of painful bruising in my right jaw, TMJ and cheekbone. That’s all gone. It’s amazing. It’s blowing my mind. There’s no more pain in the ear canal or behind the ear. The jaw feels totally relaxed. The pulling sensation across the left of my face has gone. Before, I couldn’t see properly with my right eye, as if there was a veil in front of it, but that now feels normal, as if a tunnel vision has opened up through my eye. The tension in my neck has totally gone.”
After I finished treatment on her back, and I could see her front, I saw that her face had relaxed to the point that the Bell’s Palsy looked, at least visually, around 50% gone. This improvement disappeared within 10 minutes. As she was leaving, she said: ”Even now, I can still feel waves of heat, and opening up of my right eye vision. The only thing that hasn’t improved is that I still don’t feel much control over my facial muscles; it’s still difficult to smile normally.”
Second Treatment:
This was two days later. She is much more relaxed than when I first saw her. She reported: “On the day of treatment, I slept all afternoon and night. The vibrations were continuing in all the affected areas well into the evening. All the pain is still gone, and other improvements have continued except that vision in my right eye has been going in waves of seeing OK and then going back again. In my back I’ve also noticed that I’m feeling very aligned and that a long-standing ache to the left of my right scapula has gone since the first treatment. I’m feeling good, so the only real problem is interacting with people due to the way my face looks.”
Treated her with 3P in Slider 5. The highest reading was around the lumbar-thoracic junction where she has had a chronic ache for many years. Again treated C5/6 and she reported: “There’s involuntary jaw again, though not so strong, and a feeling of opening up of the right side of my face, and unwinding of my occipital ridge. This point is triggering deep emotional energy, though with no story attached.” It didn’t last, but when I looked at her face, the BP grin had relaxed and was largely gone.
Her main trigger point for this session was right of T3/4, near where she had been aching previously. This dose lasted 35 minutes before I stopped it, and during it she reported: “I started to feel very very hot as soon as you put the device on that spot… (after some time) the heat has subsided, and there’s been a huge release in my diaphragm. I feel there’s a massive amount going on, big waves of heat passing up the scapula to the neck. Now there’s a lot of tension in the right shoulder but it feels like it’s related to a rebalancing in height between my shoulders. There’s been a lot of tingling in my right cheek and the vision in my right eye has opened up again. I feel like I need a lot of sleep.”
Third Treatment.
She still has little control of her left facial muscles, but her face appeared overall more relaxed with the BP much less evident other than when she was smiling. All the improvements from the first and second sessions have held: all the pain is still gone. She is getting twitches now in her right cheek. The long-standing tension in her back and especially the right scapula has largely gone. She feels vibrations from each treatment throughout the following day and night. She has been feeling much more upbeat and energetic all week. Her main tension, off and on, is now in the right mandible and TMJ, with a little residual tension in her right neck around the Sternocleidomastoid, but still much better than before.
I used Slider 5 throughout. During 3 Pathways, she was very quiet and said there was a lot going on, twitches in her abdomen, liver area, face. As with the previous two treatments, All the points above and below C7 which had been so high previously were now at low levels, and I wanted to move on to at least a couple of points on the face. I treated her right, and left (which took 8 minutes to dose) mandibular angles, and she said “I feel that something has moved back into place on the left side of my face. Both jaws feel very relaxed, and the remaining tension in my right neck area has gone. I feel very spaced out.” She has to go away now for 10 days, so we’ll resume after that.
Fourth Treatment.
After her 10-days break, she said that most of the gains had continued, she still had no pain, and there was further improvement for two days following the last session. However, her energy levels then began to decline again, and she found the muscle weakness in her face returning. The tension between her scapulae was still much reduced, but had moved from right of the spine to the left.
I treated her initially with 3 Pathways in Slider 5. While treating T1/2, she said: “I feel a wave of tension in my chest, which has now moved up to my neck. My shoulders have relaxed and dropped, and the tension in my neck is relaxing.” Once I was treating the C5/6 segment she reported: “I can feel a change happening across my face. There’s very slow involuntary movement in the jaws, especially the right side. It feels like something is melting in the front of my neck and lower face, especially on the left side. I’ve had a lot of emotional tension in my neck. I can feel slight involuntary movements in the whole head (which could be seen), and there’s an unwinding in the right occipital ridge. The melting feeling is spreading to the back of my head. There’s a feeling of ants crawling all over my body down to the feet. It’s opened up the gall bladder meridian and I can feel a sensation from the back of my neck on the right and over the forehead.” I then treated around her zygomatic arch on both sides. Afterwards, she reported feeling aligned, spaced out and happy.
Fifth Treatment.
She has been feeling fatigued, a little nauseous and dizzy. What she found amazing was waking up this morning and feeling small muscle movements going on around her mouth and up the right cheek. At this point, she felt she could smile again normally. For a few minutes she also felt a numbness all over her body, and feeling of ants crawling over her skin.
I treated her with 3 Pathways, Slider 10. Initially, she felt numbness and hardness in her face. I then treated her right front jaw for 11 minutes and she reported that the jaw felt very loose, and then the same position on her left jaw for 6 minutes which produced sensations above her right eye. After treatment, she reported tingling across her neck, that the right side of the mouth felt less frozen, and that her right eye felt less frozen and was twitching. She felt good but “zapped, as if a lot is going on.”
Sixth Treatment.
Following her last treatment, she has been having lots of very strong involuntary movements in the muscles around the mouth. However, she finds that any social interaction sets it back, making the muscles feel more frozen. She feels her symptoms are very emotionally linked. In 3 Pathways, she reported the neck, then jaws and abdomen relaxing, movement in the muscles around the mouth and right eyebrow, and a sensation of the face being pulled back to centre and becoming more balanced, slight movement in the spine, head and torso, and then wider movements across the whole face. After treatment she said she felt “extremely tall”, and that her face felt a bit less frozen.
Seventh Treatment.
She said she is feeling very happy with her progress: “Before, my face felt dead and vacant, but it now feels alive with much more energy, especially on the right side. Now, when I massage the facial muscles, I get involuntary movements in them, whereas before there was no reaction.” Also, she had forgotten to mention the that hyperacusis – extreme sensitivity to noise – that she experienced since the Bell’s Palsy began, has dramatically reduced – “it was torture, especially sounds in the kitchen like one plate being placed on top of another, but now I can wash the dishes without much of a problem.”
During 3 Pathways, she reported a feeling of opening in the chest, then as I treated the upper thoracic, the same tightening in her neck which was the first symptom before her Bell’s Palsy fully appeared. Treatment at T1/2 produced pulsating in her right jaw, and to the right of that, involuntary movement in the cheeks and mouth. Finishing at L4/5, she felt a strong adjustment along the whole spine that went up over the crown of her head. I then used Scenar-Cosmodic Myo Auto on her right posterior jaw, then her left TMJ, long doses taking 15-20 minutes. Afterwards, she reported the face feeling more open, balanced and normal.
Eighth Treatment.
On arrival, her face looked more relaxed and balanced, and she said everyone has been telling her that. For 36 hours after the last treatment, she felt worse, with strong tension reappearing over the side and top of the head. Now she feels fine and that she is getting more control over the mouth. So the right eye is now her main concern – vision is still improved but the eye is still staying open and getting dry and sore. Plus she has a lot of tension again to the right of her left scapula.
During 3 Pathways she felt various involuntary movements in the face, and very strong vibrations across the head, front of torso and in her feet. I then used Myo Auto on thoracic and facial areas. I treated to the right of her left scapula and she said “it’s taking me to a very deep place, where I may not want to go, I’m feeling very tired and sleepy. My face is starting to feel contracted, and I feel nauseous.” After a few minutes rest she decided to continue. I then treated high-ish readings at her right and left temples. The whole treatment took only 32 minutes but afterwards she said she felt she’d just had a very major treatment, very strong, and that she needed to go and lie down for a while.
Ninth Treatment.
She looked more tense and said she’d not been feeling very well with stiffness at the back of her neck, a mouth ulcer, and feeling even more withdrawn due to fresh social commitments. The prospect of greater demands on her to socialise when she feels so self-conscious about her face (and bored by having to explain it to everyone) is creating a lot of stress.
In 3 Pathways, again the high readings were lower lumbar and upper thoracic. Right of C4-6, she reported feeling very hot, and involuntary movements across the face. To help her deal with all the stress, I then used Pirigov Ring in Scenar-Cosmodic Myo, 7 passes, and S/C Myo on her left and right TMJ’s (6 and 3 minutes). She said her face felt more alive, and she was very relaxed.
Tenth Treatment.
Continued progress: She found today she was able to totally close her right eye and keep it closed, and make some very small movements in her right cheek, both for the first time since the Bell’s Palsy began. It feels like the “black hole” on the right side of her head is starting to “wake up”. She’s been feeling quite dizzy and light-headed, has a small point of pain at the back of her head, and feels relatively energetic today. After short doses left and right of L4/5, the long doses were left and right of C4-6, lasting 14 minutes and 31 minutes. This last one generated lots of small sensations all over the face and neck. I also treated each jaw with Slider 10.
Eleventh Treatment.
She said she’s feeling much better. There’s even more movement in the muscles on the “dead” right side of her face, and it feels like a major shift happened since the last treatment. Before, any smile was uncomfortable, whereas now it feels almost comfortable, and she can also raise her right eyebrow a little. She was able to help a friend at a big fair yesterday which was the first time to be mixing with a big group of people for the first time.
Apart from two short doses around her sacrum, I treated 6 zones above and below C7, plus her mandibular angles and occiput.
Twelfth Treatment.
She has not been feeling well the past 2 days and her face feels like it has slipped back a little since the day after treatment, with a return of a black hole feeling on the right side of her face. Plus she has a stiff neck since yesterday -- she can only move it about 2/3 of normal rotation. Again the doses were along the sacral segment and C4-6 segment. The dose on her sacrum felt very strong and produced a lot of sweating around her neck and numbness in her face.
Thirteenth Treatment.
Not a lot of change since the last treatment, although she has noticed very small changes in muscles around the right side of her mouth and sensations in her right cheek. She had a brief setback last week with a lot of work to do but the Bells Palsy energy seems to be lifting. The left side of her face still feels quite numb, and her right eye is still blinking very little. As usual, doses were focused around the sacrum and cervical spine. She felt a vibration up through the whole left side of her head and that the right side of the head was opening up. After the treatment, she reported feeling clear and light.
Fourteenth Treatement.
She said she was totally exhausted after the last treatment. She hasn’t noticed any further change in the face but on the mental level, she was able to go around town and mix with people for the first time in 2 months. Treating above and below C7 produced made her feel very tired and hot, then involuntary movements around her mouth and a sense of opening up in the whole face. I then used micro movement brushing in Scenar/Cosmodic brushing on her trapezius muscles, left and right.
Fifteenth Treatment.
She said the last treatment was very strong and she was “totally wiped out” for the next 36 hours, going to bed by 9.00 pm and sleeping for 9 hours each night. On the positive side, she can now raise both eyebrows, and there is some movement coming in the right lower eyelid. At this visit, she is still feeling tired. Again everything was focused around the sacrum, and above and below C7.
Sixteenth Treatment.
She looked much improved, overall about a 75% normal look to her face. She has been feeling good in terms of the Bell’s Palsy, but quite a lot of emotional turmoil. She has a stiff neck and shoulders but there has been further improvement in the right eye and she is now able to close it totally (before it would stick around 1 cm short of the bottom of the eye), and it is blinking about a quarter of the height of the eye. There was nothing major to report during treatment and we’re clearly heading for a break.
Seventeenth Treatment.
She has had a stressful week, which always impacts her condition. The improvements have been maintained but she has seen no further progress during the week, there were no major changes during this session. She has clearly hit a plateau, is now in her seventh week of treatment, and we agreed to take a break for 6-7 weeks.
PAUL LOWE
T: 01273 803388 (direct)
T: 01273 803888 (receptionist)
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