The Toolkit
What actually helped. Ranked.
I spent tens of thousands of dollars getting my face back. Here’s the uncomfortable truth I learned doing it: the cheapest things on this list did the most. So it’s ordered by what worked, not what cost.
One patient’s experience — not medical advice. When in doubt, get seen.
Two disclosures, up front. Some links here are affiliate links — if you buy through one, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Nothing appears on this page that I didn’t personally use, no company has ever paid to be listed, and a commission has never bought a place on this list. Several of the best things here cost nothing at all and earn me nothing. This page is personal experience, not medical advice — see the Medical Disclaimer, and talk to a doctor before you add anything.
Before you spend a dollar
This is a map, not a wall.
Recovering from this cost me somewhere in the region of thirty to forty thousand dollars across the first year — most of it out of pocket, on a high-deductible plan I never came close to satisfying. I’ll show you the full breakdown at the bottom of this page, because it’s one of the most-asked and least-answered questions about this condition.
But I am not putting that number here to frighten you, and if you can’t spend it, you have not lost. Looking back with a clear head, the things that moved me furthest were a twenty-dollar piece of foam, a free breathing practice, a mirror, and a latex glove.
“Getting better takes money. It just doesn’t take that much money.”
So this page leads with the version that costs a few hundred dollars — ranked, honestly, by what actually worked. The expensive tier comes after, clearly marked as what it is: nice to have.
Start here
The few-hundred-dollar kit.
Seven things, in the order I’d buy them again. If you only ever read one section of this website’s shopping advice, read this one.
Eye protection
Day one · non-negotiable · cheap
Top of the list and it’s 100% necessary. Your eye won’t blink or close, it’s drying out right now, and a scratched cornea is the one piece of damage here that’s both fast and permanent. Everything else on this page can wait a week. This cannot.
Daytime
Refresh artificial tears
The drops that worked for me after two others didn’t. Three to six times a day, on a schedule — not when it feels dry.
Overnight
GlobalRoll gentle-removal patches
Soft adhesive that comes off without taking your skin with it. Ointment underneath, patch on top, every night. I reordered these for months.
A captain’s-style patch (a soft daytime cover once the swelling came down): on Amazon. Two other drops I used but liked less than the Refresh tears above: one and the other. And for the shower, in the early months when my ear was still blistered, Vaseline on a third of a cotton ball kept the water out — the Vaseline and the cotton balls.
The full playbook — including the daytime patch, the two brands of drops that did nothing for me, and the tape you must not use — is in Eye Care.
The Still Point Inducer
The highest-leverage thing I bought
A piece of red foam you lie back onto. It costs about twenty dollars. I credit it with ending my vertigo — after three months of walking like a drunken sailor, I started using it in September and the world stopped moving. It was the number-one thing I used to get better.
That is my personal experience and not a claim about what it does for anyone else. But dollar for dollar, nothing else I bought comes close.
What I used
Still Point Inducer
Lying on my back, tucked under the back of my head — a few minutes at a time at first, several times a day, working up to ten to twenty minutes each morning.
Breathing
Free · and I’d rank it above most of what I paid for
One of the most powerful things I did in the entire year, and it costs nothing. James Nestor’s book Breath got me started. Box breathing became daily. Nose breathing became the default. And I taped my mouth shut at night to keep it that way while I slept.
It is free, it is available to you tonight, and I would put it above the thousand-dollar machine further down this page.
Free
Box breathing & nose breathing
No equipment, no app required. Four counts in, hold, four out, hold. Do it when the panic rises, which it will.
Cheap
Kinesiology tape
A strip across the lips at night to force nose breathing. My physiotherapist also had me tape it on my cheek to coax the smile muscles to move. Never on your eye — far too harsh for eyelid skin.
Gua sha & fascia tools
Cheap · daily · face and neck
A stone tool for working the fascia in the face and neck. When one whole side of your head has been braced, clenched, and immobile for months, the tissue around it seizes up in ways you don’t notice until someone releases it. I used the flat stone around the closed eye, and the roller across my whole face to wake up muscles that were getting no daily movement or sensation. This became part of my daily wind-down.
Managing sound
Coping, not curing · the earplugs are cheap, the headphones are the splurge
The tinnitus started on day one and has never left, and loud rooms are still genuinely hard a year on. Noise is one of the parts of this that doesn’t show and doesn’t get talked about. Two things gave me back the ability to be out in the world and around my own family.
These help me live with the noise — they don’t fix the hearing. The earplugs are the cheap, carry-them-everywhere essential; the headphones are a real splurge, so treat them like the red light below: lovely to have, not required.
Out and about
Loop-style filter earplugs
For restaurants, events, and loud crowds. They take the edge off without plugging you up completely. Going out in public, these are a godsend.
At home · the splurge
Bose QuietComfort headphones
For home, where people don’t always realise how loud a room has gotten. Noise-cancelling lets me be around family without the volume becoming a problem. Not cheap — a genuine luxury.
Red light — without needing the $1,000 machine
Nice-to-have, not essential
I used a professional-grade panel, about thirty minutes a day, with red-light glasses on. Mine is a Celluma, and I’ll be straight with you: it cost a little over a thousand dollars, and you do not need to spend that.
A modest panel from Amazon and a proper pair of protective glasses does the same job. And if the budget only stretches so far, spend it on items 01 through 05 first — they earned their place; this one is a luxury.
What I actually use · the splurge
Celluma red-light panel
The professional unit I use, ~30 minutes a day. It’s a little over a thousand dollars — a genuine luxury, not a requirement. A cheaper Amazon panel does the same job.
Don’t skip these
Red-light glasses
Protect your eyes — and remember one of yours may not be closing on its own yet, which makes this less optional for you than for most people.
The exercises — nearly free
Almost free · and among the most valuable things I did
The mirror exercise. The compass drill for the vertigo. The glove-in-mouth massage to open the smile from the inside. The long-towel neck release. The cost is a box of latex gloves that runs pennies, a wall you already have, and one cheap mirror.
The one thing here worth buying is a facial-retraining mirror. My physiotherapist had me use one that reflects your working side across the centre, so your brain sees a full, moving smile — a way to coax the healing along by showing it what “whole” looks like.
What I used
Facial-retraining mirror
Reflects the good side across your face so it reads as a full smile — a physiotherapist’s trick to help trick the mind into rebuilding what isn’t moving yet.
Every one of these is described in full in Recovery — and every one should be taken to a facial therapist first, because the right exercises depend on how far your nerve has healed.
Not a recovery tool — just the truth. For months I sat around the house in my work shoes out of sheer habit, and at some point I gave in and got a pair of Crocs so being home felt a little more like being home. It fixed nothing medical. It made the long days on the couch feel more human, and after a year of hard things I’ll take that. Here they are, on Amazon.
The free superpower
AI made me a sharper patient.
This is the thing I did that I’ve never seen anyone else write about — and it cost nothing at all.
For months, talking was exhausting. My face didn’t work, my energy was gone, and appointments moved fast. So I started writing everything down — every symptom, every question, every strange new sensation — and I put it all into ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.
Not to diagnose myself. To learn the language.
01
Learn the terminology
I didn’t know the word “synkinesis.” I couldn’t describe what I was feeling in terms a specialist would recognise. AI taught me the vocabulary of my own condition.
02
Work out what to ask
I’d go in with a written list of specific, well-formed questions instead of “so… is it getting better?” Appointments got dramatically more useful.
03
Show up prepared
Practitioners noticed. When you arrive able to describe exactly what’s happening, you get better answers — and you get taken more seriously.
AI is a way to become a better-prepared patient. It is not a doctor, and it is not a substitute for one. It cannot examine you, it cannot prescribe the antivirals, and it will confidently tell you things that are wrong. I used it to walk into appointments sharper — never to avoid making them. Do not let a chatbot talk you out of getting seen.
It costs nothing, it’s available to you right now, and I’d put it among the three most useful things I did all year.
What I take
The supplement shelf.
This is my routine. It is not a recommendation, and I’ve deliberately left the doses off.
Here’s what’s on my shelf, a year in:
Two things worth knowing. I dropped the ashwagandha — one of my practitioners believed it was actively working against me, and I stopped. And I noticed my eye twitching tracked with low B12, which was a useful signal for me personally.
I’ve listed what I take and left the milligrams out on purpose. Some of my doses are well above standard daily intake, and supplements are not harmless — they interact with medications, and several of these are genuinely risky in the wrong quantity for the wrong person. Talk to a doctor or pharmacist before you add any of it, especially while you’re on antivirals or steroids. These statements haven’t been evaluated by the FDA, and nothing here is intended to treat or cure anything.
On food: I cut the sugar, the soft drinks, the junk, and most of the gluten, and aimed the whole thing at reducing inflammation. My only rule was if a food makes your stomach feel bad, stop eating it. The longer version is in Recovery.
The question nobody answers
What this actually cost me.
I looked for this number when I was newly diagnosed and couldn’t find it anywhere. So here it is, honestly — with the caveat that follows it.
I was on an HSA / high-deductible plan and never hit the deductible, so I paid essentially all of this myself. An employer plan that covers costs after a deductible would change this arithmetic enormously. Your number is not automatically my number.
And now the thing I actually want you to take away, because it’s the truth and I’ve earned the right to say it:
“The most expensive thing I bought was not the thing that helped most. It wasn’t close.”
The thousand-dollar machine was a luxury. The twenty-dollar foam ended my vertigo. The free breathing practice changed my sleep, my panic, and my days. The free exercises rebuilt my face. If you have a few hundred dollars, you can do the things that matter most.
Getting better takes money, even a little. It just doesn’t take thirty thousand dollars — and I’d hate for that number to be the reason anyone gives up before they start.
Seth
Patient · Founder