The singer’s dramatic video has shed light on a little-known and often misdiagnosed condition. Unless treated quickly, it can have life-changing consequences
att Carney, a stage manager who lives in Bedford, was at work in 2017 when he experienced the first of a series of mysterious symptoms. “We’d just started a performance of Hairspray, and almost with the first beat of the overture an intense earache started – like no earache I’ve ever had before.” Painkillers had no effect and when he was driving home later, his face felt strange in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. Within two days, he says, “it was completely paralysed on the right side”.
There’s the chance that if I’d had the antivirals early on, I might have avoided the paralysis altogetherAfter an initial Bell’s palsy diagnosis, it wasn’t until day four that he had an attack of what doctors later suspected was vertigo, and went to hospital, where he was finally diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome – too late for the antiviral meds.
Nduka had been working hard during the pandemic, he says. “I was giving a talk on facial palsy when my face started twitching, and I had this horrible sensation on the side of my tongue and an awful taste, which is one of the early symptoms – altered taste because the facial nerve also supplies the front part of the tongue. I knew what it was and was able to get treatment early on, and managed to abort the onset.
It’s nine years since Deborah Lack’s Ramsay Hunt syndrome was misdiagnosed as Bell’s palsy. Now 42 and based in Hertfordshire, she still has tinnitus and at her most recent checkup – the first in four years, thanks to Covid – found no improvements in her facial movement. Other than give her Botox to relieve tightness in her facial muscles, she says, “they said to me: ‘Nothing else can be done for you.
This makes everyday things like spitting after brushing her teeth, or drinking from sports bottles, impossible. “You can dribble as well, and if I’m out to eat I often put my hand in front of my mouth because I’m aware that one side can be open,” she says. For family photographs, she always stands at an angle to hide her affected side.
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