Warning Signs, Symptoms and Recovery from Bell's Palsy

I thought I was having my first migraine headache: an aching sensation behind my right ear, sensitivity to light and sound, and a headache throughout the right side of my head. As the day progressed, so did my headache and I started feeling numbness in the right side of my tongue. A few hours later, as I tried to put on my makeup, I noticed that I couldn’t close my right eye. I frantically researched migraine symptoms on the internet and found that numbness in one side of the face was, in fact, a sign of a migraine headache. I breathed a sigh of relief, took some acetaminophen and decided to lie down with a towel over my eyes. 

I thought I would wake up the next day with this migraine experience finally behind me, instead, I found the symptoms were getting worse. I still couldn’t open or close my eyelid, and now the entire right side of my face was numb. I couldn’t smile. My cheek wasn’t moving, my eyebrow seemed to be down a little low, my forehead wouldn’t scrunch and I couldn’t move one of my nostrils. I couldn’t overlook the obvious—maybe I had had some form of a mild stroke. I sat down at the computer again and began researching strokes. I had no symptoms of slurred speech or memory loss. Things just weren't adding up. Maybe I had a tumor. What was happening to me? 

My husband contacted a good friend with a medical background and he knew immediately that I had Bell’s Palsy and instructed me to see a doctor. I was back at the computer doing research on Bell’s Palsy and found that I had every symptom of this condition. How could I have missed this? How could this have happened to me? What could have caused this?