Back in 2013, 38-year-old Megan Dennis came down with chicken pox. She fought and overcame the illness fairly quickly — or so she thought.
A couple weeks after she'd just recovered from the chicken pox, Dennis returned to the doctor because she still felt unwell. Her intense earache prompted her doctors to assume she had a sinus infection and send her home with medication.
Just a few weeks following this appointment, however, Dennis' husband, Will, noticed that his wife's smile was no longer symmetrical. The left side of her face was sagging and not responding as it should have.
Dennis immediately turned to Google for advice and diagnosed herself as having Bell's Palsy, muscle paralysis or weakness caused by nerve damage.
When she returned to the doctor, they confirmed her diagnosis and speculated that residual virus leftover from her chicken pox several weeks beforehand was at the root of this problem.
But even though Dennis' doctors could offer her this information, they weren't able to suggest her any form of treatment. There was a chance that Dennis would have to live with this condition for the rest of her life.
This, more than anything else, was what devastated Dennis the most. Back in high school, she'd been voted "Best Smile" and derived a lot of her self-confidence from her smile.
"Losing [my smile] took a lot of my confidence away, it left me in a dark place where I felt like I was strange and that everyone was staring at me," Dennis admitted. "Because my face was drooping and sagging it made it very hard for me to go out and talk to people."
Although Dennis' doctors told her that they weren't able to treat her condition, she was determined to find a solution herself.
For years, Dennis sought out acupuncturists and went to get Botox injections, all to see if she could find someone to loosen the rigid, tight muscles on the left side of her face.
All of this was to no avail.
It was only just a year ago that Dennis chanced upon information from the Facial Paralysis Institute in Los Angeles, California. The doctors there could perform a procedure they called a platysma reaction that would loosen the muscles in her face.
Dennis decided to go for it.
During the initial recovery period, she was extremely anxious that the procedure had failed, that people would treat her differently for the rest of her life because of how her face looked and how she couldn't pronounce certain letters.
But now, a year later, Dennis has made a full recovery. Her facial muscles have loosened again, and she can continue smiling her "Best Smile" again.
"The surgery was really good, it created a much bigger, better more manageable smile for me," she said "The difference between now and last year is like night and day, it's such a massive improvement."
