Well as many of you know here... the first week in december i randomly woke up with bells palsy.. Part of the nerve damage included no taste buds or hot/cold detection in 90% of my mouth and nasal cavity.. since then on the weekends just to get my nic fix ive been smoking through whats left of my less than stellar stash.. Well the symptoms are almost all the way gone, and i have all my taste buds back. Even though it was a very quick recovery it took forever..

My palate however feels young again (so to speak). Flavors which i remember i was able to distinguished in certain sticks arent there like they where... when i first discovered my palate as a noob it took me a while to separate certain flavors, and i feel like im back to that point almost... Its cool in a way but also a little frustrating in a way.

The topic isnt really a question, or an informative post. Just thought id throw my experience out there for everyone to see..

Thanks for reading.

Randy.



Also for those not familiar with bells palsy..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_palsy
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Wow I've never heard of that...glad to hear you are feeling better!
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Glad your better Randy:-)
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Glad to hear of your recovery Randy. Any idea how it happened? Tick bite perhaps?
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No idea how it happened... they threw around 2 idea...

1) I train MMA and jiu jitsu on a fight team 5 nights a week. Around the time it happened one of my team members was getting ready for a fight and in getting him ready we were heavily sparring. Dr thinks maybe i could have taken a punch the wrong way or impinged something while wrestling.

2) a day or 2 before it happened we got a decent snow here in jersey and i was out shoveling and plowing for a good 10 hours.. The introduction of drastic hot to cold temprature changes theyre saying could have negativly effected this nerver.

Other than that.. Ive been to so many dr's... My general, a neurologist, a radiologist... had catscan MRI... and everyone is just scratching theyre head..

they say it usually only effects 1 in like 40,000 well hear i am!
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Glad that things are much improved, Randy. :-)
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Glad to hear your starting to feel better. As frustrating as starting over with a "new" palate, Im sure you'll get the identification back in no time. Stay healthy!
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Interesting, 2 nights ago at work we were talking about bells palsy because my co-workers dad has it.

Glad things are on the up and up!

Might be a dumb question but, do you do Jiujitsu or train mma anymore?
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Best wishes to you. My friend had this, and bottom line, no one knows why you get it! Glad to hear you are on the mend!
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Thanks everyone :-) much appreciated... now what to do tomorow for the game... i dont really want to smoke something overly special as i feel itll be a waste...


I actually just started back training 2 weeks ago... when i started training again the symptoms were still 100%... so the healing all happened while trainning... at least the visual part of the healing anyway
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Glad you are feeling better. I have encountered a few people with a Bells Palsy, but I have never heard of it impacting the taste senses. That's wild.

But, I appreciate that you went to the cigars with less "appeal" to work your way through the condition. I was thinking the same thing as I read your post. Great minds . . .
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I have had Bells Palsy twice in my life and it is something that is very strange. You lose mobility in your facila muscles and also lose taste. In most people they return back to normal but for the unlucky few it becomes a life long ailment. As was said it is something that few have experienced and what causes it is still uncertain. Stress is something that a lot of medical people have said prompts it but mine was gone in a couple of weeks. It does put the "kabosh" on cigars. Glad you are over it.
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Glad to see someone else here knows what i went through!!

i dont know what was worse.. the lack of taste buds, or the fact that due to half of my mouth not being able to work it was almost impossible to clamp down on most cigars...

thank god for punch rs11's from the cigar boom... they got me through this and i didnt feel guilty about smoking through these bad boys haha
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The good news was that it only affected one side,,,,so I smoked my cigars on the other side and blew the smoke out of the affected side. I wasn't going to let BP stop me. Reminds me of when I thought I could smoke out of the wrong side,,,,oops, there goes my lit cigar in my lap,,,WTF?
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Randy,
A colleague of mine, while we were on business in NJ, with relatively nice weather as I recall it being in the spring/summer, goes to bed perfectly fine after dinner with the group and wakes up with half his face numb and paralyzed. We had no idea what it was at the time and convinced him to leave an head for medical help thinking in terms of a stroke. Turned out to be same condition as you and in a couple of weeks, it cleared up on him.
Was scary to say the least.
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Thats what i thought also... im young (28 in 3 weeks) so as a stroke would be unlikely, its def. not impossible... I was late for work that day, and rushing when i left the house. I didnt notice it until i was half way too work.. Luckily i work in a hospital. But my first thought was "WTF i had a stroke!!!"
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