Saturday and Someday

When I see you smile baby
Baby when I see you smile at me
Sometimes I wanna give up
I wanna give in
I wanna quit the fight

Bell’s Palsy Diaries

February 20, 2004

“I have a big smile. I saw myself laughing in the mirror once, and it reminded me of a national geographic special where a wolf was guarding its prey.”

(This is what I wrote a year ago in documenting my Bell’s Palsy episode. It seemed funny at the time.

And now, well, to me anyway, it seems funnier. It was when I started to realize that I was a doink©).

At mile post 27 heading north on Interstate 5 where the bend at Kalama approaches the Columbia River, the sun came out of the clouds low to the west, the sky orange up high and gray off the water, and my reaction to this wonder, as every day, was to whistle.

But I couldn’t. I pursed my lips and blew, the mechanics of a whistle so fundamental to me that I had never thought about how many muscles go into this particular motion.

I looked in the rearview mirror. There was a gaping hole on the right side of my mouth where my lips would not close. I couldn't.

I puffed out my cheeks, trying to hold the air in my mouth, stretching my cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie. The air escaped easily through the lips on the right side of my mouth.

I smiled. Only half of my face responded. It was such a funny sight, I laughed. Only half of my faced responded.

Bell’s Palsy, I thought. Or a stroke.

I bet it’s not a stroke, though. I don’t smoke that much. And I’m not under that much stress. And I don’t eat that much red meat and I hardly ever eat bacon fat, except on Romanian holidays. And that’s practically only once or twice a month. And besides, bacon is pork, and pork isn't red meat, it's the other white meat, the first being caucasians.

But just in case, I repeated my name, age and mailing address out loud. After the 15th neurotic repetition, I noticed in the rearview mirror that I was saying my name, age and mailing address out loud. Now that’s funny.

I laughed. Only half my face responded.

"Honey, I'm home! And the right side of my face is paralyzed. Anything to eat?"

My wife didn’t believe me at first, because I’m always saying this kind of shit, desperate as I am for attention.

“Honey, I met Matthew McConahunk, will you scratch my back?”
“Honey, I saw visions, will you rub my neck?”
“Honey, my testicles finally dropped, will you dance on the table?”

But on this occasion, I was able to prove it. I smiled at her, and her horrified reaction was pleasing to me and yea the world was good and lo there would be much scratching of the back and rubbing of the shoulders.

She tried desperately to get me to go to the hospital, but I feinted.

“Alex, as you know, I’m trained as an emergency medical technician. That’s practically a doctor in your village. I’ll be fine. I know how to treat this. Do we have any of that boxed wine left?”

We did.

I grabbed the wine, poured, or rather, squeezed out, a glass and took a great big swig. All of it came spraying out from my lips like a fountain. I realized for the first time that I always take swallows too big for the volume of my mouth, and then hold in the sweet, oh how sweet, liquor in my mouth with the force of my closed lips.

“Do we have a straw?”

Needless to say, Alex was horrified and plenty angry with me a year ago when I refused to seek treatment for my paralyzed head.

This not withstanding, I am generally a quick learner. I took tiny sips from the glass of wine, one right after the other in rapid fire. And in a strange twist of irony, my taste buds weren’t working either, so the wine tasted like medicine. That was a good thing, I thought, because in essence, I was medicating myself.

When I tried to eat, however, I realized for the first time that I also take bites that are too big for my mouth. When I filled said mouth with mashed potatoes, the left lips held firm, as any wild animal would when guarding its food, but the right side, sadly, gave way. The potatoes oozed out the right side of my face as though my head were a soft-serve ice cream dispenser, plopping pathetically onto a pile on my plate.

My wife looked at me in a mixture of disgust, pity and concern. But mostly disgust. I smiled.

Only half my face responded.

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Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t find me attractive;
Look me in the heart and tell me you won’t go.