"In 2019, at the age of 25, my life took an unexpected turn overnight when I underwent brain surgery to remove a tumor. During the surgery I suffered a stroke, which left me unable to walk or write, and with the sensation that the world is constantly moving. Due to nerve damage, the right side of my face was also permanently paralyzed. When I woke up, everything was different, mostly in the way I saw the world"
"In 2020, I became the first person in the U.K. to undergo a pioneering smile surgery, in which nerve and blood vessels were grafted from my right calf to my upper lip, to give power to my affected side. The results weren't immediate, and it took a further three years of physiotherapy to learn to smile again and engage my bite muscles. However, with time, the surgery enabled me to regain some of the expressions I'd lost"
At 25, brain surgery to remove a tumor caused a stroke that left the narrator unable to walk or write and with a constant sensation of the world moving. Nerve damage permanently paralyzed the right side of the face. In 2020, pioneering smile surgery grafted nerves and blood vessels from the right calf to the upper lip to restore movement. Three years of physiotherapy were required to relearn smiling and bite engagement, and the surgery recovered some lost expressions. The experience produced tension between social-media beauty standards and authenticity, and a lasting partial paralysis now represents resilience and self-acceptance.
Read at BuzzFeed
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