Visit to the dentist left me with paralysed face for two months

AN actress has told how she feared having to give up her career after a visit to the dentist left her with face paralysis for two months.

Amy Ambrose, 32, from Henley, suffered Bell’s palsy on the left side of her face after undergoing routine root canal surgery in London.

She struggled to eat or speak properly and was forced to take six months off work while she underwent rehabilitation to get her facial muscles to work again.

Now, after recovering fully and being able to audition for roles again, she wants to raise awareness of the condition.

Miss Ambrose, who has appeared in feature films, on stage and on television, began experiencing pain in the left side of her jaw, face and her neck in March, when she was living in south London.

She said: “I was in the middle of rehearsals for show called Hormonal Housewives starring Vicki Michelle from ’Allo ’Allo! The director said, ‘that sounds like you need to go and get a root canal’.”

Miss Ambrose, a former student of the Piggott School in Wargrave and The Henley College, managed to get an appointment on a Saturday morning.

She said: “It was clear from the X-rays that I did need a root canal work and that explained the pain.

“The dentist did one anaesthetic injection and as soon as he did it, it felt like all the electrics and motors of my face had shut down. When he went to work on the tooth it was still just as painful.

“I think he’d injected into the nerve instead of where he should have done. He gave me a second injection and was then able to work. That happened at 10am and by the end of the day there was a drop of my mouth and no feeling at all.

“I thought I’d had a reaction to the anaesthetic. A friend who’s a doctor said ‘take anti-histamines’, which I did. Then I woke up on the Sunday morning and I was worse. The droop was really big by that stage and my left eye wouldn’t close. There was no feeling there — I couldn’t even move my eyebrow.

“I was terrified but still thought it was related to the anaesthetic.”

Miss Ambrose said the chances of having “dentist-induced” Bell’s palsy were higher if you have root canal work on your lower jaw but she had treatment on a tooth in her top jaw where the risk was lower.

She called the dentist and explained her symptoms to a receptionist who said the anaesthetic may not have worn off and advised her to come in the following day if she still felt the same.

On the Monday Miss Ambrose chose to see her doctor instead.

She said: “She said it was Bell’s palsy induced by the dentist. As an actor, I was thinking ‘this is it. I’m going to have to give up this career or maybe do it with the palsy’.

“She did say it was probably temporary but you just don’t know if the feeling is going to come back.”

Miss Ambrose went to King’s College Hospital immediately and was able to see a specialist who gave her steroids.

She then moved to Shiplake to live with her parents, Roger and Debbie Horton, who cared for and supported her during her recovery.

“It was then a case of waiting,” she said. “The doctors said, ‘stay rested, stay relaxed’.

“I couldn’t really talk and had to hold my mouth in place to make sense. Eating was quite hard. I changed my clothes about three times a day because you struggle to eat and drink without spilling it.

“If you can’t blink your eye it means you’re not keeping it moist and I had to have a patch on mine and keep it taped down at night.

“I also sing in a band called All About Amy with my dad and his friends but I couldn’t do any gigs.

“It’s quite heartbreaking how differently people react to you with your face drooping. You can’t smile and you start feeling like you’re being rude.”

She began doing facial exercises to try to regain the movement and had acupuncture two or three times a week and reiki sessions. She also visited a kinesiologist, a type of holistic therapy that uses non-invasive muscle testing on the whole body to find problem areas.

Miss Ambrose, a vegetarian, was also advised to eat red meat to boost her red blood cells.

She finally started to see positive results in May. Miss Ambrose said: “It started with the slightest movement of the top lip and then weeks later a smile started to happen.

“It was quite quick then. The last thing to come back was my eyebrow. I think I got that working fully in mid-June.

“I hadn’t been drinking any alcohol because I was scared but I had a really big glass of wine to celebrate.”

She stayed with her parents until July and sold her flat in London before buying a home in Henley and moving in with her dog, three-year-old cavachon Alfie.

She is now an acting coach at the School of the Arts in Reading as well as having a reiki studio called Flower Moon Healing in her garden.

Earlier this month, her root canal procedure was finally completed at Blandy House Dental Practice in Hart Street, Henley.

Miss Ambrose estimates she lost about £20,000 in income from work and paying for dental work.

She said: “I’ve only just begun auditioning now because being nervous still causes my eye to twitch.

“I lived in London for 12 years and never quite realised how much of a toll that was taking on me in so many ways. Now I’m near my family in the countryside.

“Although it was the worst thing to go through, the good outcome is that I’m here.”