Time keeps running away on me. Here it is late into my Sunday afternoon, and I am only now making my first weekend post.
Concerning yesterday, I will report that I visited the local Shoppers Drug Mart about four blocks from here immediately at its 8 a.m. opening that morning. I have not visited there since very early this year, for usually I only needed nutritional supplements, and I was able to get those at any of the three supermarkets I was frequenting.
However, by late in August, two of those supermarkets had mandated the wearing of face masks, and thus far I have boycotted any such store, even if it means I must pay a little more for some of the 'staples' I seek.
So that left me with only Save-On-Foods to shop at because I only venture out for my grocery shopping very early in the morning (and only on weekends), and the store must open by 7 a.m.
But more and more of late, it seems, Save-On-Foods has been reducing the variety of nutritional supplements that it stocks. I first noticed that it no longer supplied selenium, and then it seemed as if chromium had been dropped. Then last weekend I discovered that I was no longer able to find vitamin E in the mixed tocopherol forrmula ─ all the store seemed to stock was just the commonplace d-alpha tocopherol form of natural vitamin E.
Ever since I learned that vitamin E is a complex of compounds, I have steadfastly sought the vitamin E complex, even though it is a little more expensive.
Shoppers Drug Mart has an extremely good nutritional supplement section. However, I assumed that it also had a mandated face mask policy in place. It was only after some research during the past week that I learned that I was misinformed.
So off I went early yesterday and got caught up on my nutritional supplemental stocks. I even bought a bottle of niacin after reading a Mercola.com article back on October 16 titled Why Are NAD+ Precursors so Important?
I knew that niacin causes flushing, for I had that experience back when I was in my latter 20s. Consequently, I was prepared for it.
Unfortunately for me now at the age of 71, I was not as able to handle the flushing as facilely as I did many years back in the latter 1970s. Also, it is very likely that I never used a supplement as strong as this ─ 500-mg tablets.
I took the supplement along with some others at a meal I had around mid-afternoon yesterday. Then I started working on my private blog.
Soon, I became aware of the advance of a suffusion of warmth to my neck and head, and then it began quickly extending downward to my torso and extremities. I was curious to see just how much I was looking flushed, so I checked that with a mirror. I was definitely red, but not as brilliantly as I remembered from my youth.
I continued with my blog post, but then I began feeling very prickly. It grew worse and worse. As long as I was immobile, it would abate; but any slightest movement would exacerbate it.
It became far too uncomfortable to bear being clothed any longer; and since I was curious to see how much I had flushed overall, I resorted to my bedroom and stripped down to my undershorts. Yes, I was definitely looking pretty darned red. Even my feet, the surfaces of which were also suffering from the nearly extreme prickling.
I figured that I might as well just lie back onto my bed and wait the process out, thinking that I might be in for this bit of crisis for a half hour or so.
Initially it was difficult to tolerate the aggravation that my bed caused my naked back and legs, so I drew my feet up to at least relieve that much of my body from contacting the bed.
Again, though, any slightest movement would unleash a fury of renewed prickling ─ I didn't even need to be touching any other surface with my body parts. Things just seemed to get worse. Even my pubic hair began to cause undue irritation, for each hair end became a tormentor to my skin.
I had to shuck my undershorts and wait for the wave of agonized prickling that such an action initiated. But even my mere breathing caused prickling because of how the hairs on my chest and belly would also cause some torment from just touching my skin.
I actually began wondering with concern just how far this was going to escalate.
After about a half hour of lying as motionless as I could with my knees drawn up, I had become very drowsy. Keeping my legs drawn up as they were was becoming a most uncomfortable posture.
I had gotten to the point where I wanted to try and lapse into a nap if it was possible, but I was too cool lying naked atop my bedding. As much as I dreaded what was to come, I had to cover myself in order to properly be warm enough to wholly relax.
Naturally, the full body movement required to extend my legs, as well as to use my arms and to shift my body for best effect under the covering, was practically excruciating. This was torment!
But as expected, ultimately by lying as still as I could despite the near agony eating away all over my skin from scalp to feet, front and back, the burning did assume another subdued phase for as long as I could ignore any urges to touch myself or to shift in the slightest.
I may have had to lay there in bed for as long as 1½ hours, but I did semi-doze. The day was waning, though, as dusk was not far off. I had to risk getting up.
The tingling was still there, but I found that it was tolerable once I was dressed.
And from there, the symptoms gradually eased away.
I trow, never again shall I consume one of those 500-mg tablets! I will instead be breaking each one into several pieces, and taking each section as my daily dose of the vitamin. I ought to get four or five days of value from each tablet.
Supposedly, tolerance to the vitamin is built, but I fully intend to take my time with that!
I think that I can blame the physiological stress of the experience for bringing on a feeling of overall unwellness over my evening. I became exceptionally stiff ─ and even simple movement proved taxing. In fact, I found myself breathing heavily from just kneeling down and then getting up.
I had to force myself to have the lightest of suppers, for I had absolutely no hunger ─ my day's sole earlier meal seemed leaden within me.
The overall disabling effect I felt was so profound that I honestly struggled to conceive that I might ever again manage to feel anything else. Would I be coming back from this pathological malaise?
My wife had unexpectedly shown up prior to that first fateful meal. She was only here for an hour or so, and cooked us up a pasta dish. Then she had to go to work, and left here around 3 p.m.
She was back again in the early evening shortly after 7 p.m., but only for a half hour or so.
No one in this household bought anything for potential 'trick or treaters', so I had the house in as much darkness as I was comfortable with. Meantime, I kept a watch from various windows, staring out to our cul-de-sac for any evidence of mobile costumery moving about out there.
Nothing. Not a kid ever appeared out there ─ just occasional older teens and various adults. Our cul-de-sac has a passageway affording pedestrians access to a major avenue, so we do tend to have considerable foot traffic through here.
But the fireworks! There was no stinting there ─ not in the least. Some of the households must have spent many hundreds of dollars.
I had myself a can of strong (8% alcohol) beer at one point, and even spent some time in the dark backyard, listening to the explosions, and whistling, and sizzling of various types of rockets, flares, firecrackers, and what could only be correctly termed as bombs.
Nevertheless, by 9:30 p.m. I felt myself able to handle going to bed. I did sleep, but was often enough awake for short periods. I finally rose barely ahead of 3 a.m., and came here to my computer to do some work.
I had early morning plans to make the 1¼-mile hike to Save-On-Foods to do some grocery shopping, but I fully expected that I would need to break from my work to get some further bed rest first.
To that end, at one point I became concerned on just how much time I was wasting at my computer, and in checking I could scarcely believe that it was only something like 3:48 a.m. How had only 45 minutes passed? That seemed impossible. It was more likely that my bad eyes had misread the time in the bedroom, and it had really been approaching 2 a.m. and not 3 a.m. when first I got up.
Well, I was correct concerning the misidentification of the time; however, that was only because we had undergone a time change overnight, and our clocks were to have been set back by an hour. I had heard nothing about this being imminent!
I finally returned to my bed barely ahead of 5 a.m., with my cellphone's alarm set for 6 a.m. When the alarm later sounded, it pulled me from a dream. I had been sleeping.
It took me around 10 minutes before I was able to rally enough to get myself up; and first on my agenda was a cup of hot black instant coffee.
It was 6:45 a.m. when at last I began my journey to shop under clear skies, the morning already bright. Yet last weekend at a half hour later, it was still quite dark. I preferred the dark.
Anyway, I got my shopping done without incident.
By the way, my brother spent last night at the home of his girlfriend Bev. Had I been up to it, I could have watched a Christmas movie and had a couple of beers.
He came home fairly late into the morning today; and then at the tail end of the noon hour, he headed off again and has been away ever since as I type these words at 6:29 p.m.
My wife has been home now for a little over a half hour, so I am going to call it quits for today.
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