OT: A most peculiar thing...

[AgentZero]

I had a most peculiar experience while walking home from the movies tonight. About halfway through my stride, my foot felt like it twitched and suddenly I lost track of where it was. It was like suddenly the lower half of my leg existed, though with no sense of paint. This caused me to wobble slightly, and I only regained sense of where my foot was when it touched the ground.

The strange thing is, when it touched the ground, it felt as if it was touching the ground where it left the ground, as opposed to where it actually landed; which was mid-stride. This gave me the most bizzare sensation that felt as though I'd suddenly taken a step backwards somehow, and caused me to stop and pull up short, at which point I felt my foot touching the ground where it actually was.

I asked my friends if I'd taken a funny step backwards (the fact that they continued forward when I stopped suddenly only reinforces the memory and sensation of a step backward), and they all, including those who had been standing behind me said that I didn't stumble or wobble or anything, I just took a single half-step and stopped kind of funny, but other than that, nothing terribly unusual.

So the question on my mind is, WTF was that?

Edit: And as I was having a smoke before I went to bed, I noticed that an odd pattern of light and dark caused by dry and wet places on the pavement. The best I can describe it as is that it looked like a silhouette of Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons coughing up an upsidedown seahorse. I thought it was kind of an amusing image, but when I turned around, I noticed that the same pattern of light & dark created another, very similar image. The Sideshow Bob part showed a lot of the same features as the smaller one, albeit slighly distorted. There were the same spikes creating the hair, the same shaped nose, the same protruding Simpsons upper lip, including it's slight wobble (sort of like when a Simpson character is showing yelling very loudly/angrily), and the same bits of unidentifiable matter being expelled with the cough.

The stranger thing is that for the seahorse part to be positioned appropriately to match the smaller version, it would have to be somewhere on the lawn. Stranger still, the seahorse part on the larger one appeared above the Sideshow Bob's head, with a few of the little 'bits' that had been around it in the smaller one trailing behind it back towards the curb and then back to Sideshow Bob's mouth, creating the very strong impression of the seahorse being expelled from Bob's mouth, had ricocheted off the curb to bring it to it's new position over his head.

Looking around for something to have caused them (it was right in the middle of the parking lot, with nothing nearby to shelter them. I did however notice a similar pattern caused by gaps in the branches of a nearby tree. I thought for a moment that perhaps shadows cast by the tree had caused the sun to dry those parts more quickly, and the difference in their size had been caused by their angles from the sun.

Several things disuaded me from this idea: The most obvious reason was that it had been cloudy and raining all day, and the sun hadn't poked through the clouds once, let alone long enough to do any drying. There was also the fact that to create that pattern would have needed two light sources, and the idea that the sun might have poked through, disappeared then poked out again later was countered by the first problem. Lastly was the issue that the angles of light required to make the pattern was inconsistent with the sun's path through the sky. I considered that the pattern might have been made by the tree sheltering the area from the rain, but this didn't make sense because the expected pattern would have been inverted (patches of wet surrounded by an area of dry, itself surrounded by wet intead of the actual areas of dry surrounded entirely by wet), that it would have required a level of wind (there was none all day), at a consistency not seen in nature; since obviously a varying wind would have 'erased' the image in this situation.

So again, I am wondering, WTF is that?

[capnq]

See a doctor IMMEDIATELY. All of those symptoms are consistent with a minor stroke.

[Randallw]

Not to lighten the tone of what appears to be a serious discussion, but several months ago I had a weird experience. I was lying in bed half asleep when I noticed that although I was fairly rigid my left arm and leg were spasming. I was holding them back but they felt like they wanted to jump about. I might even have had to lie on my arm to keep it still. I haven't felt it since then though.

[Azselendor]

It sounds like you may have had a TIA (minor stroke event) and you should see a docotor zero. As soon as possible.

[AgentZero]

Well, I've been to the doctor and been poked and prodded a lot and had my head X-rayed and stuck in some big tube for some reason, and they all say my brain looks perfectly fine. Which is great news in the 'not having a stroke' department, but not terribly good news in the 'what the hell happened department'.

[capnq]

Originally Posted by AgentZero

[...] had my head X-rayed and stuck in some big tube for some reason

The "big tube" would be an MRI scan.

Glad to hear you're OK; I was starting to get concerned about the lack of a followup post.

[Baron Munchausen]

A small stroke (which can be a prelude to a larger one) is one possible explanation for what you have experienced. It was smart to get checked for that. But I have a good memory, and I remember some of the other things you have posted here about your health.

Are you still on psychoactive drugs? Have you recently had your dosage changed? Changes in dosage of psychiatric drugs (including starting or ending their use) can have strange effects on perception, sometimes weeks after the change.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Well, don't know what's happening, but it does sound worrying.

And yeah, some meds can do strange things to your head. Generally not near as bad as what they fix, but still...