On a Saturday morning, two weeks after my week of observation in the hospital, I woke up early and went to my computer to get some thoughts recorded. I turned my laptop on and as usual as it boots up, a diagonal DELL appears across the screen with the E slanted like the old ENRON symbol. When I turned away from the computer, I could still see the slanted E, but instead of being fixed and its normal blue color, it started turning and changing colors. That image lasted about 30 minutes. Later that morning, my wife and I went to the annual arts and craft show at a local school. I must have stayed too long and walked too much. I was tired and hungry and there was too much food aroma in the gymnasium and hallways of the school, too much noise and visual stimulation. At one point I was having trouble walking and my wife asked me if I was having problems. I said I’m tired and I am seeing some unusual things. She wanted to know what I meant, I said “Spiders.” She asked me, “What do mean?” I explained, the following: One vendor had golden spider Christmas tree ornaments. They were based on a legend from North Germany of spiders that would decorate Christmas trees and leave presents for the kids in the house and then get on the Christmas trees and turn to gold. After looking at these ornaments when I looked up I started seeing gold spiders scurrying around on the top of people’s heads and on the tops of booths. Later, occasionally I would see these spiders. None of them ever spun a web. They would just run across the top of things in my field of vision.
On many tables there were shirts with pictures of fishermen pulling in trout that were jumping out of the water. Later when I would look up particularly against a blue background, I would see trout jumping in midair. One vendor had marshmallow blow guns made out of small white pvc pipe with red and green pieces of tape on them. These reminded me of an old the screen saver I used to have on my computer so I started seeing these blowguns growing by adding 90 degree angles and extending new pieces.
One of the most prevalent food aromas came from a vendor who was roasting nuts. The smoke from his roasters set off the fire alarm in the building and I started having problems walking again. My wife got me a chair. After I had rested for a while, I guess I still had a puzzled look on my face, and she asked me “What’s wrong?” I said I am hungry. We left the show and drove home. On the drive home, every time I looked up at the sky, I saw trout jumping out of the clouds.
The next day, I had the same visual images off and on all day long, but I began noticing a pattern to them They appeared more often when I was in the presence of bright lights and loud noise and/or when I was tired and/or hungry. Even without lights, when I was frustrated or engaging in a battle with myself, I would see the dueling light sabers that I mentioned in a previous posting. When I was waiting impatiently for something to happen, I would see the spinning cursor image. When I was trying to put something together like the thoughts for an essay, it was the PVC pipe screen saver. When I was facing something that was obviously wrong, I would see the revolving E. When everything was fine and going smoothly, I would see trout jumping out of the stream. When there was a lot of confusion and a lot of action, but no recognizable pattern to that action, I saw the gold spiders scurrying about.
As I related these events to my doctor, she indicated they could be auras, ocular migraines, or side effects to medication. She didn’t want to take any chances on the reoccurrence of a seizure, so she reduced the dosage of one of my medications and started me on another. After about two weeks on this new combination of drugs, I noticed some changes. The strange visions are greatly reduced. What is happening more often now is that “I feel like I am in a fog.” My doctor said, if that doesn’t go away, she will make some additional changes to my medications to see if we can hit on the right combination.
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