‘Teen Mom’ Alum Shares Update on Facial Paralysis

Bristol Palin is making strides in her recovery from sudden facial paralysis.

The former Teen Mom star, 34, took to Instagram with an update on her condition seven months in, revealing in an Instagram Story Q&A that her face is “probably 70 percent back to normal.”

Asked how she was “handling emotionally” her facial paralysis, Palin responded, “I feel like I’m handling it well. I can’t look at pictures of myself [right now].”

Palin recalled that in January, she woke up and found that half of her face was paralyzed, “completely out of the blue.” She continued, “No warning, wasn’t sick, didn’t get the v@x, no recent Botox. Just paralyzed.”

Asked if she would ever “recover fully” from the paralysis, the daughter of Sarah Palin noted, “It *could* be permanent, but I don’t think it will be,” adding, “It is slowly improving. My doctor thinks it will be another three months before I’m *hopefully* back to normal.”

Palin first shared the news of her facial paralysis in January. “I woke up nine days ago with a weird little sensation in my face,” she explained in a Jan. 29 Instagram post. “My mouth was pulling this way, and it just felt a little off. So, I went and looked in the mirror. I’m like, ‘Wow, this is looking a little weird.’”

The MTV alum said she could barely blink and had “no movement” on one side of her face at all. After seeking medical help, Palin said doctors “ran tests,” “did a CT scan” and put her on steroids as well as “other medications.”

“Nothing came back with all the results,” she continued. “They think it’s just a case of Bell’s palsy, maybe brought on by stress or lack of sleep. I’m not really sure. There’s nothing that I was super stressed out about, but I think it was brought on by stress.”

Bell’s palsy is a condition that causes sudden weakness in the muscles on one side of the face, according to the Mayo Clinic, and is thought to be caused by swelling and irritation of the nerve that controls the muscles on one side of the face, possibly due to a reaction that occurs after a viral infection.

In February, Palin revealed that she had been doing “all the things” to try and heal, including “acupuncture, lymphatic massage, oxygen chamber treatment, red light therapy,” and cutting out “almost all of the processed foods” and “most caffeine” while “trying to clean up everything.”