Bristol Palin is detailing a scary experience with facial paralysis.
Sarah Palin’s daughter, 34, opened up about the health ordeal and road to recovery via her Instagram Stories on Wednesday.
“I woke up nine days ago with a little weird sensation in my face,” Bristol told her followers. “My mouth was pulling this way and it just felt a little off. So I went, looked in the mirror. I’m like ‘Wow. This is looking a little weird.’ ”
@bsmp2/Instagram
The mom-of-three shared a series of videos showcasing the onset of her facial paralysis and the days following. One clip featured Bristol waking up and looking at herself in the mirror as she stated: “I feel like everything is pulling to the left.”
The timestamp on the video read 10:30 a.m.
Later in the day, at 5 p.m., the facial paralysis appeared to get worse, as Bristol showed followers footage of the left side of her face appearing to have a “delayed” reaction. In the clip, the “Teen Mom OG” alum made several faces, explaining that the “entire” left side of her face was “just numb.”
She added, “It’s so bad dude.”
“Within a couple hours the entire left side of my face was numb and just paralyzed,” she recalled of the experience in her Instagram Story. “Couldn’t really blink my eye. Definitely had no movement on [the left side] of my face. So crazy.”
Bristol went to the doctor’s office and they “ran tests” and did a “CT scan,” which X-rayed her body to check for possible causes. As she put it, “nothing came back in all the results,” and doctors put her on “steroids” and “other medications.”
Bristol shared that doctors believed her facial paralysis could have been brought on by “a case of Bell’s palsy,” which is a temporary paralysis or weakness of the facial muscles on one side of the face.
According to John Hopkins Medicine, it can be caused by several factors including an infection, high blood pressure, diabetes and other toxins. Bristol said doctors told her that her case could have been caused by “lack of sleep” or “stress,” which she thinks is the cause.
Bristol noted that “eastern medicine” has been helping her symptoms, and she has “been getting acupuncture multiple times” which has “helped speed up the process of recovery tremendously.”
By “day eight” Bristol added that she thought the paralysis was “getting a little better.”
“I know I look crazy right now, but this has been such an improvement from what I was looking like,” she said in a video on her Instagram Stories. “I’m finally starting to get some of the sensation back. It’s been a little painful the last two days, which is a [good] sign. It’s a good indication that it’s getting better. Praise the lord!”
Bristol also acknowledged how the medical ordeal has put things into perspective.
“But the next time that I look in the mirror and I pick myself apart where it’s like, ‘Oh my nose is long. I want a nose job. I want to do this. I want to do that,’ I am going to remember this and I am just going to be so thankful for a normal functioning face cause this has been wild.”
