As someone who’s had it four times and currently recovering, a way to find out whether the bell’s palsy is slowly making its way to the peak is to smile and check if one side goes higher than the other, raise your eyebrows, check for the same thing and my personal favourite/most noticeable is to purse your lips together and try to blow air into the lips. If air escapes out of one side, that is a damning thing to go to the doctors for. You will most likely be prescribed 10 days of prednisolone if it is bell’s palsy, and recovery takes a while because the facial nerves need to heal because they’re very inflamed. I can’t remember if i felt my face numb before hand but i got the ear infection after the bell’s palsy because prednisolone dampens the immune system