We have been talking on Zoom for a few minutes when Sarah Ling breaks into a broad, if slightly lopsided grin. Her right eye squints, then closes – she looks a bit like she’s winking.
As she stops smiling, her eye remains closed for 광주 성형외과 a while longer, before relaxing.
‘I can feel it happening,’ says Sarah, 43, who works for a fostering agency and lives near Cambridge with husband Matthew, 42, and 광주 성형외과 their 18-month-old son Benjamin. ‘But because we’re on Zoom, I can see it too, which makes it so much worse.’
Sarah suffers from facial palsy – a weakness of the facial muscles, caused by problems with one of the major facial nerves which control the muscles around the eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks and forehead.
Some people with the condition also suffer facial spasms and, in Sarah’s case, this causes a pronounced wink when she smiles – which, as I discover during our 20-minute chat, is something she does often. The muscles in her cheek and neck, on her right side, also tense and ‘lock’ uncomfortably.
Lopsided grin: What happens when facial palsy sufferer Sarah Ling smiles during a Zoom call – her right eye squints, closes and appears to wink.
‘I thought I’d had a stroke,’ she says
There is a treatment for the condition: injections of Botox, the toxin famously used as a cosmetic anti-wrinkle therapy but which also has a wide variety of medical uses. The jabs work by blocking nerve signals to the muscles into which it’s injected.
But when the pandemic hit, clinics closed. Botox, even for 광주 성형외과 these patients, was deemed cosmetic and non-essential.
Sarah was able to have one round of injections with her NHS specialist back in August last year, when services recommenced briefly, but has been told that she has no prospect of another session until June.
Patients in some areas may face even longer waits.
Sarah has suffered from the condition since being struck by a viral infection in 2016, and agreed to talk to me on Zoom to show me exactly what she deals with, day to day.
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She says she ‘broke down’ when she was told she would not get another lot of jabs before summer. ‘I begged them – I was actually sobbing. The spasms come on when I smile, and when I’m tired. My family have told me it doesn’t look too bad, but as I’m spending all day in Zoom meetings, I can see myself, so I know they’re just trying to make me feel better.’
Sarah’s problem began five years ago.
‘I woke up one morning and looked in the mirror – and to be honest, I thought I’d had a stroke. I was staying with a doctor friend who did a quick assessment, and she said, no, it was facial palsy.’
Sarah went straight to hospital, 광주 성형외과 where she was offered steroids, which can help dampen inflammation in and around the facial nerve.