Gridlock

About a year ago, a certain medication was causing me to experience phantosmia: i.e. smelling odours that weren’t actually present. It was not exactly pleasant to smell gasoline in my den, but stopping a certain medication put an end to it. Or almost: for every now and then, I seem to smell something that Sue doesn’t, and we do know that she has a keener sniffer than I. Nevertheless, these new [and infrequent] odours have been fleeting and actually pleasant. 

This is not about that but about a very different sort of hallucination, a year later.

On Saturday evening, we were watching telly at supper time. (I say telly because it was British. lol) There was wallpaper in background of one of the scenes, and I asked Sue about it. I wondered if she saw grid lines on the wallpaper. She didn't, but I did.

I don’t know when it began, but sometime in the past month or two, I have been noticing grid lines, like graph paper, on neutral surfaces. I first noticed them on the porcelain on the lid of the upstairs toilet. Then, I saw them on the downstairs toilet. Then I noticed them in lots of places: namely, floors and walls.

As I sit here composing this on my tablet, I look up and see grid lines on the opposite wall. But as you can see below, they are not there. Well, they are for me, even in the picture, but not for you.

I have played a lot of Sudoku in these quiet, post-surgery days, especially as I have been endeavouring to become more proficient at the Expert level.

Is that it? Have the Sudoku grid lines imposed themselves on my brain, or even left impressions on my eyes?

That doesn’t seem possible, but I shall stop playing the game for now to see if that makes them go away.

Googling yielded me no answers. I have seen that one test for macular degeneration is if grid lines go wavy. But those are real lines. Mine aren’t real, and they are straight, not wavy.

Other than that, I am seeing well, at least as far as I can tell. My most recent visit to the optometrist, just two months ago, did not reveal any cause for concern. Perhaps, I should ask for another consult, but first, I shall wait to see if my withdrawal from Sudoku corrects this weird phenomenon. I will miss my puzzle-time, but that too is life,

It’s not that this is affecting my life, but it does perplex me a little and maybe even concern me a tiny bit.