Two weeks ago, I noticed that the edema in my legs was markedly worse. The right leg is usually not too bad, but the left leg took damage from the ligament replacement surgery and subsequent infection which has caused it to hold more water than it should. Normally, when I go to bed, the swelling subsides, then picks up again when the leg is no longer horizontal.
The left leg was really swollen last week. And the top of the foot was swelling as well. This was bad. I figured I'd order a compression stocking and see if that helped. It arrived in time for me to wear it for the drive down to Marcon and really didn't help that much.
But after putting on the compression stocking, I was running through a mental list of Things That I Might Have Changed That Would Cause A Problem.
And I realized that on Monday of the week before, I had started taking a fish oil supplement with a large dollop of Vitamin D in it. Hmm.
I had been taking a Vitamin D supplement before, but that amounted to only about 3500 units a week. The new supplement added another 14,000 units.
Well, I could stop taking it. And I did. And the other Vitamin D supplement as well.
Vitamin D is fat soluble, so it takes a while to clear out of the system. But the edema in my legs is now markedly reduced after about a week and a half of cold turkey and starting to approach normalcy again.
Supposedly, Vitamin D should reduce edema. A web search found one poor soul who was taking 50,000 units of D a week and was noticing edema in his legs, so asked one of the on-line doctor sites about it. They naturally replied that they'd never heard of that.
I'm thinking this is Yet Another Idiosyncratic Reaction.
*sigh*
Another week or so and things should be back to normal, I think... :)