6A: What’s wrong with your face?

When I was in the first grade I was diagnosed with Lyme disease. My sisters noticed a twitch in my face muscles and they thought I was doing it purposely. They kept scolding me, and telling me to stop doing that to my face. They picked on me till the point one day I broke down crying, and then they noticed there was really something wrong because there was still something strange about my face. That’s when they pointed it out to my mom and I went in for a doctor’s appointment. The doctor figured out quickly that half of my face was experiencing paralysis a symptom of Lyme so they took blood work to confirm it. However, they never found a bullseye or any sign of a tick which was uncommon with most cases of this disease.

They started treatment but it didn’t work at first and my face continued to get worse. At this point it was extremely noticeable and more severe. My eye on the side of the paralysis lost almost all of its ability to blink and I had to apply eye medication and wear an eye patch. As you can imagine having half of my face paralyzed and wearing an eye patch made me look incredibly awkward, and my fellow first graders weren’t the best at playing it off. They would ask me “what’s wrong with your face?” or “is your face gonna stay stuck like that forever?”. I remember hearing one girl saying I looked like Sloth from the Goonies movie. These things made me feel horrible I didn’t feel comfortable in class but I tried my best not to let it show. I knew I couldn’t miss anymore school or else I would fall behind and have to repeat a year. That’s when persistence came in the picture. Even though some days I felt down, I would regain my strength and still come back the next day. Eventually, my face started to get better and I learned to look back and laugh about it.

There are several things I gained from this experience. First of all I am so grateful that they caught it in time and that I was fortunate enough to make a full recovery, I am aware that some people get stuck with some permanent paralysis. I’m also glad that I was able to develop a sense of humor and gradually move past the embarrassment. Even though I was quite young I learned that life has its rough moments but that we just have to keep moving forward and not let them get the best of us.