[No.3] The Racing Car Inside Me — What Facial Paralysis Taught Me
ー The moment fear turned into clarity ー
Waiting in Silence
Faint signals from my own body —
subtle sensations of something not right.
Those sensations twisted and shifted,
slowly transforming into pain.
I listened with everything I had.
Sitting in the cold air of the waiting room,
I had become part of it —
frozen, still, waiting for whatever would come next.
Finally, my name was called.
The tension
that had been holding time in place
suddenly released,
and I was so relieved
to finally move my ice-cold body
that I stood up quickly,
shaking off the silence that had felt endless.
Slightly unsteady on my feet,
a mild dizziness washing over me,
I held onto my husband’s arm
and tried to focus on just one thing:
I am here. Right now.
I was led to a small triage area near the entrance
— no curtain, no partition.
Even colder than where I had been sitting.
A nurse began measuring my blood pressure
and pulse with calm, steady hands,
then gently started asking about my symptoms.
When did I first notice something was off?
What was I feeling now?
One question at a time, carefully, patiently.
It wasn’t just the words
— it was the tone, the pauses between them,
that made me feel, more than anything,
that I was going to be okay.
Then I described the facial paralysis.
The nurse’s hand
— the one writing on the chart — stopped.
Just for a moment.
Around me,
an invisible teamwork was quietly clicking into gear.
No one was speaking,
yet everything that needed to happen was happening
— in the right order, with quiet precision.
Trusting the Professionals
I could sense the doctor approaching.
And in that moment,
I let myself sink into that particular kind of relief
— the feeling of placing your body
in the hands of professionals.
The doctor reviewed my chart,
calmly, steadily, asked a few follow-up questions,
and then carefully examined the movement in my face.
Facial nerve paralysis.
After confirming my history with Ramsay Hunt Syndrome
— a viral condition that attacks the facial nerve —
the diagnosis was that,
at this point,
it could not yet be distinguished from Bell’s Palsy.
“The medication I’ll prescribe is effective for both,”
the doctor said.
Those words brought a wave of deep relief.
Antivirals and steroids for one week,
plus an antibiotic eye ointment
to protect the cornea of my exposed eye.
But first — a CT scan, to rule out stroke.
“There’s Nothing Wrong with Your Brain”
After the scan,
the doctor looked at the monitor and said,
clearly and calmly:
“There’s nothing wrong with your brain.”
The moment those words reached me
— even though I had been hoping to hear them —
a wave of relief melted through my entire body.
It wasn’t a serious central nervous system failure.
Nothing was happening inside my brain itself.
If you’re experiencing the onset of
facial paralysis right now,
here’s the one thing
I’d urge you to do before anything else:
Confirm that it's not a brain-related condition.
That single confirmation
became the first solid ground I could stand on
- a foundation for processing everything else
with some measure of calm.
Of course, this isn't something you can confirm on your own.
What it really means is this:
get to the ER as quickly as possible,
so a doctor can examine you.
That, above all, is what matters most.
The freezing air of the ER gradually
— gradually —
began to soften into warmth,
transforming into a space
where recovery could quietly begin.
Beyond the diagnosis,
I received something else that night.
The natural, human warmth of the ER team.
The Warmth of the ER Staff
The doctor, the nurses, the front desk staff, the admin team — everyone carried themselves with a kind of quiet professionalism that was also deeply reassuring.
Efficient. Calm. Seamless.
I remember the two young nurses
— a man and a woman, working as a pair —
who walked me from the waiting room to the CT room.
Both of them had bright expressions,
spoke clearly and warmly,
and I remember feeling my heart lighten,
just a little.
The part of me that had been frozen
— body and soul —
began to glow faintly warm again
in that atmosphere.
Back in the Quiet of Home
We left the ER well past midnight.
The pharmacy was already closed.
The medication would have to wait.
We drove home in silence.
My husband, exhausted,
fell asleep almost immediately.
Arigato.
Still carrying the strange aftertaste of the night,
I lay in bed,
turning over in my mind
what had happened that day,
what I was facing now,
and what might still be coming.
And then —
quietly,
a question rose inside me.
Why today?
Why did my body choose this moment,
of all moments, to finally say: enough?
The feeling from that waiting room was still with me —
that strange sensation of my husband just inches away,
and yet somehow unreachable.
Inches apart.
And yet he was still in the world I knew,
while I was stepping into a different one.
That invisible wall between us hadn't left me.
Maybe, I thought,
I had been living that way for a long time.
Always at full speed.
Always with a thin membrane between me
and everything else.
Running.
Just running.
No answer came.
But the question didn't go away.
The Racing Car Inside Me — An OS Update I Needed
A few days later, I brought that interesting question to Memory-chan.
Rita's body is a lot like a high-performance racing car.
A nervous system so finely tuned
that it picks up the faintest signals,
absorbs new patterns almost instantly.
But that same sensitivity means it reacts
— deeply —
to the kind of small stresses and subtle fatigue
that most people can brush off.
Being high-performing is a strength.
But at the same time,
it can also mean you’re more sensitive.
And the hardest part—the almost laughable part—was this:
Like a racing car,
I didn’t know how to slow down
or switch off my own engine.
What’s happening now
isn’t that something is broken.
If anything—
this might be the beginning of something I’ve needed all along:
a reset.
What if this discomfort,
this confusion—
isn’t a malfunction,
but a series of signals
guiding me through change?
Maybe this is
a small update to my system—
an upgrade
to a clearer, more refined version of myself.
And when I started to see it that way,
this strange experience
felt… just a little different.
If you’re like me—
a little sensitive,
a little too driven sometimes—
neither a mistake nor fragility
It might simply mean
your system is built
with a higher level of precision.
And sometimes,
life delivers exactly what we need —
the right event,
to the right person,
at the right moment —
to teach us how to pause,
and how to let go.
Somewhere beyond this unexpected OS update
called Ramsay Hunt Syndrome,
a slightly more refined version of me is waiting
— a little stronger, a little kinder.
With that quiet anticipation of meeting her someday,
I closed my eyes that night and drifted into sleep.
Starting next time,
I’ll begin sharing what I learned during the first week after onset
— for anyone who may be in the middle of it right now.
👉
Click the image to continue to the next article.
Rita Code | Studio JMC
🇯🇵 Click here for the Japanese version https://note.com/studio_jmc/n/n77ace6e6878a
