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At this time I was taking 1000 IU every twelve hours which until now had been sufficient to keep me functioning normally. However I been to experience familiar symptoms again.
- One day I could not find my gloves. I eventually found them in a kitchen cupboard with no recollection of putting them there.
- I went to get my keys but there was an empty space where they should have been. I looked in other places and eventually returned to see them right where I had first looked.
- I began to get so tired that I had to have a nap a few hours after noon. I started waking up to the residual light shows from my dreams.
- I yelled “I hate you!” at the woman leading a meeting that got tense.
- I was crossing the road one day at the town hall. I looked up to check for oncoming traffic and saw that the road was clear for 230m. The traffic lights on Yarmouth Way had just turned green and cars were emerging on to South Quay. I remember registering the scene vividly like a freeze frame in my head. I had what seemed like a brief ‘senior moment’ then headed across the road. I had crossed two lanes when I heard the roar of engines and stopped at the white lines between the lanes while one car passed behind me and another in front. I could not understand how they had managed to cover the distance in such a short time and why they had not slowed down as they approached me. In June 2019 I was walking over Haven Bridge and thinking back to those events. I remembered how I used to black out when I looked up and to the right while washing up. I realised that I had had an non-epileptic seizure so I had been unaware that a longer time interval had passed. The cars had not slowed down because the drivers would have seen me looking their way and assumed I was just being bloody minded.
- The carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) returned full blown this time. My left shoulder and upper arm became painful whenever I was sitting down. Several months later I was thinking back to the instances of CTS spasms and finally realised that they were caused by low vitamin D.
- Black flashes in my peripheral vision.⮵ I did not perceive them as cat's tails as before⮵. One time I thought it was the free end of my belt and another time it seemed like a huge mosquito.
Despite all of these symptoms, it never occurred to me to increase the dose. In November I was in a meeting. I considered saying something but it would have revealed something private about someone else so I decided against it. Then I sat aghast as I listened to myself blurting out what I did not want to say. I felt drunk straight away but fortunately the meeting ended shortly afterwards. I left the building and headed to the bus station walking quickly and feeling as though I had had a few too many. I remember the bus leaving the stand, when it turned onto the sliproad to the southern bypass and when it turned off towards Acle. When the bus was passing the Sainsbury supermarket, about 200m from the bus terminus, I came round and realised that I had been blacked-out the entire journey. I took a tablet as soon as I got home and increased my dose to 1000 IU every eight hours from then on.
The next day, a Friday, I went to the supermarket to buy food for the next week. They had some coffee and walnut cakes at 30% discount. I was brought up on homemade cooking so I rarely buy cakes but the offer was too good to resist. When I got home I cut myself a slice. The flavour was so incredibly intense I looked at the ingredients to see if the cake contained artificial flavouring but it was natural. During the week I cooked some left over carrots and potatoes for a late night snack. Both vegetables had an unusually strong flavour. The next Friday I bought another coffee cake and it had the same intense flavour. The late night snack during the following week was parsnips and potatoes. The parsnips had an unpleasant taste of creosote. A couple of weeks later I bought another coffee cake but this time it had the weak flavour I expected from a shop-bought cake, containing just enough coffee so as not to violate the Trade Descriptions Act.
When I was a boy, two of my favourite foods were gammon cooked in split pea soup and bananas and custard. The custard was Bird's made with half whole milk and half reconstituted evaporated milk. I used to cook these for myself but at some point they stopped tasting the way they had. I assumed my taste buds getting less sensitive with age and stopped eating those foods because it was depressing. Some months later I was feeling a bit nostalgic and made myself bananas and custard for desert. I was surprised to find that the creamy deliciousness was back. Some months after that I bought some bacon because it was on special offer. The meal that I cooked with it had all the flavour I remembered.
The overreaction to certain flavours was akin to that when I took my first vitamin D tablet and when I overcame my lack of motivation. For this reason my hypothesis is that the loss of taste was because of reduced functioning within my brain rather than the taste buds. The flavours that were enhanced were those that had an elevated meaning from childhood. My father used to grow vegetables, going out to dig up carrots and potatoes fresh for dinner. Parsnips had a special significance because we had to wait for the first frost before harvesting them. Brewing coffee in a stove-top percolator was a hallowed Sunday morning ritual. The sight and sound of the coffee pulsing into the glass top and the coffee smell filling the kitchen are treasured memories.
© Copyright 2020 Andrew Jarvis.