Having photographs taken when you have facial palsy

The things I dread when having my photo taken are as follows: -

• I will be in mid-blink and the end result will be I have one eye open and one eye closed!
• I will be laughing with my mouth open so people will see it's not symmetrical
• The photo will be taken from my bad side, i.e. the one with the facial paralysis
• I might look miserable compared to my friends who are laughing hysterically

The tricks I have learned: -

• Try and be photographed from my good side wherever possible
• Pull a wide-mouth frog smile and hold it there
• Keep my eyes as wide open as I can to stop from blinking!

Here is a picture of me when I was suffering with a sore eye during the winter months, central heating is horrid for facial palsy sufferers!  It's awful when you have a sore eye because you keep trying to blink it to get rid of the pain and of course this just draws attention to the fact your face isn't functioning normally so you get in a real pickle with it all!

It is a constant battle to keep my eye from feeling sore, you have to be careful what moisturisers you use, keep using eye drops, and avoid smoke, central heating and other situations that aggravate it.  You can read more about problems faced by facial palsy sufferers here.

Then there are other days where my eye feels fairly normal and I manage to take a decent picture!

I honestly think people sometimes think I am two different people because some days I look like a train wreck and then others I look fine.  But I guess we all go through that in life!

At least having facial palsy, you know there are no shallow people in your life.  As Alexandra Groves (a fellow FP sufferer) says, it is a brilliant filter for keeping bad people out of your life.