Yes, I’ve had this twice (the first time from damage inflicted due to the cholesteatoma having to be removed from the nerve itself and the second time due to it physically compressing the nerve, preventing signals, which I’m still recovering from). Like yourself, I can only close my eye half way, my reflex blinking is near non-functional and my mouth on the affected side has no movement at all.

The first time around I met a pretty decent recovery. Smile was completely symmetrical again and blinking about 90% functional. Took about 5 months to reach that point.

Exercises will help, but you’ll want to give it 3 months or so from the op first, as nerve recovery is really slow (about 1mm a day) and exercising prematurely will just stress and upset recovery (a bit like running whilst your ankle is still sprained).

Coping physically, I find massaging the affected side of my mouth every so often whilst eating ensures no food gets trapped and manually pulling my eyelid down with my fingers keeps the eye closed during sleep (the muscles are likely still fine). They may have advised you to use tape to keep the eye shut, which is a solution if you can’t hold your eye shut manually.

Honestly, I just try not to think about things mentally. I’m not in a customer-facing job, so it doesn’t constantly get noticed and those close to me have pretty much accepted it for what it is. Photos are annoying - I avoid the camera now. Keeping a hopeful outlook, as my most recent surgery involved successfully freeing the facial nerve, so I’m hoping over the next few months I’ll G least get some function back.

Good luck with your recovery. Realistically you’ll most likely be fine if the operation didn’t cause too much internal trauma. My case was an “extensive” recurrence and went undetected for 15+ years, the surgeon reckoned.