Can I voice some doubts without being browbeaten into silence, please?
First, it seems the main health complaints of the husband, excess vitamin D and hypercalcemia (excess Ca, calcium) are both unrelated to the wife's spiking of his drinking water with potassium (according to their conversation towards the end) which instead can cause hyperkalemia (excess K, potassium). Wikipedia tells me that hypercalcemia is a symptom of sarcoidosis, which the husband suffered from in 2018, early in the events described in the post so it can be explained without recourse to poisoning, certainly not with potassium. Excess vitamin D is hard to explain, especially in Sweden (!) but it's hard to see how it could be caused by taking potassium.
Hyperkalemia is a dangerous condition that could be fatal for a man with heart and kidney problems, like the author, but I can't find it mentioned anywhere in the post, or in the images of clinical notes. This suggests to me that whatever substance the wife was spiking the husband's water with (e.g. KCl, potassium chloride, a table salt alternative that can very easily be bought on and offline) it was not enough to cause any detectable change in blood tests etc. Consequently it doesn't seem like it could have anything to do with the husband's health complaints.
Which were many and varied and described in minute detail, complete with a plethora of images of medical devices and material. This is the second reason that I'm doubtful about the husband's account. On the one hand it's written as if by an aspiring writer of crime novels, with a dramatic inversion of real time events, starting from the arrest of the wife and not making it quite clear what is going on until the very end and the discussion between the pair. On the other hand, most of the medical conditions described seem to have nothing to do with the spiking of the husband's water with potassium, so why are they given so much space? The husband seems to be blaming the wife for everything that is going wrong with his health, but how many of those medical issues are symptoms of sarcoidosis, which he suffers from?
The style of writing makes it very hard for me to trust the author is giving a straight and honest account of events from his point of view. If the purpose of the post is to give a clear account of what the husband believes happened then it falls far short of the clarity that would be achieved by a straightforward telling of events in the order in which they happened and without details of no obvious relevance. There can be many reasons for publishing that kind of text on the internet, such as plain bad taste, but among the many explanations is, indeed, "Factitious disorder imposed on self" (a.k.a. Munchausen Syndrome) or in any case a very strong desire to present oneself as a victim of nefarious actions, for psychological reasons.
In any case what I have just read is a dramatic telling of a story from the point of view of a person that is clearly in ill health. I have no idea what happened, to whom, and for what reasons, let alone whether this was really an instance of deliberate poisoning. The dialogue between the pair towards the end makes both spouses look a bit unhinged. The situation is far from normal and drawing any conclusion is very hard.
The doctor in the story reported that the water bottle he brought in "had a high concentration of vitamin D," not KCl.
Obviously in this case we are entirely reliant on reporting by one side, and anything in the story could be inaccurate or totally false. But within the context of what's reported, nothing in the story really seems inconsistent with Vitamin D poisoning. And certainly not enough to motivate a weird six-paragraph medical rant like yours.
that the water bottle he brought in "had a high concentration of vitamin D," not KCl
That's very strange right there. Vitamin D is a hydrocarbon, it is completely insoluble in water. Vitamin D poisoning requires taking doses way in excess of 10K units for months on end, you aren't doing to slip a person that much through drinking water.
The only way to interpret the statement is that things are not as they are made out to be.
He devotes a big section of the post to talk about water-soluble vitamin D, and decides upon investigation that there are such products. In his narrative, he also explains how he thought his water and food tasted weird.
i have 10,000IU vitamin D (they contain K, too, though) pills. they're very small. The same size as the 600-800IU ones - although instead of having an amber liquid inside, they're almost solid yellowish white. The medium is coconut oil, which explains both the solid and the color. Anyhow my point is, 10,000IU isn't a significantly "large" amount of the active ingredient. they're oval-ish, so hard to measure, but i think they're under 1/4" in all directions.
> excess vitamin D and hypercalcemia (excess Ca, calcium) are both unrelated to the wife's spiking of his drinking water with potassium
The wife's -alleged- spiking with potassium. When noticing this apparent contradiction, it could lead to two conclusions: A. the wife is not telling the truth or B. the husband is not telling the truth.
For some reason you're following only lead B.
In one of the Chinese-language posts, the author says the police found calcium in the water at 9x the max drinking water concentrations (960 mg/l), and posts water test results and receipts for calcium. According to the author, they were drinking 6 l of water per day to try to fix their hypercalcemia, so they were consuming 5760 mg of calcium per day. The recommended dose of calcium is 1000 to 1200 mg per day and the tolerable upper intake is 2500 mg per day, so the author was consuming more than double the maximum tolerable upper intake. When calcium is taken in excess it causes hypercalcimia.
Also, calcium has a metallic taste, which is what the author was complaining of. So it all checks out, if one assumes the wife lied about the potassium and it was actually calcium.
(Also, the video allows us to pretty much rule out that the author is poisoning themself.)
I didn't read that post. I was going by what was claimed by the wife in the dialogue in the end of the post above. In that post the husband doesn't seem to challenge the claim made by the wife that the substance put in his water bottles was potassium, so I assumed that the claim was probably true. If it wasn't, then obviously what I say above is irrelevant since it's all premised on the substance being potassium.
Yes, the wife could be trying to set herself up to claim that she was mislead/mistaken about the substance she was "supplementing" her husband's diet with.
To be clera, the wife sounds creepy as all hell and spiking the water of someone with heart and kidney trouble with potassium could be considered a murder attempt. e.g. kidney patients are advised to avoid KCl as a salt substitute because of the danger of hyperkalemia that can lead to fatal heart attack.
All I took from the story was mostly that the wife claimed to be adding potassium to his water, while actually (or also) adding massive amounts of vitamin D. The potassium and calcium could come from anywhere (including supplemnents taken by him or given to him). But the vitamin D doesn't just appear. And explains the potassium.
But yes, there is definitely many holes in the story. Makes me curious to hear whether there was any public investigation.
> First, it seems the main health complaints of the husband, excess vitamin D and hypercalcemia (excess Ca, calcium) are both unrelated to the wife's spiking of his drinking water with potassium (according to their conversation towards the end) which instead can cause hyperkalemia (excess K, potassium).
You seem to be taking for granted that she's telling the truth there, that it was actually potassium she was spiking his water with. Why would you do that? Her attempt to deflect is the first time potassium was mentioned anywhere.
> Consequently it doesn't seem like it could have anything to do with the husband's health complaints.
Yeah, and the simplest explanation for that is that this was never about potassium at all. (Until she tried to make it so. I haven't seen her succeed with anyone besides you.)
> This is the second reason that I'm doubtful about the husband's account.
William of Ockham suggests it isn't his account you should be doubtful about, but hers. Like, her claim that it was a potassium supplement in the first place. That's all that needs to change for all the rest to make sense. So why take her word for it?
> The style of writing makes it very hard for me to trust the author ... falls far short of the clarity that would be achieved by a straightforward telling of events in the order in which they happened
Oh, wow. He pulls out one event, the most dramatic one, to start with. Unheard of! Who ever did that to spice up a story?!? (Oh, pretty much everyone who wants to spice up a story? Eh...) Then he starts from the beginning, mentions when he comes to that pull-out, and continues in chronological order. Really not all that hard to follow. (And this is one of the last posts on his blog, the "sum up the whole story" one. Reading through the whole blog would presumably give you your yearned-for chronological order.)
> I have no idea what happened, to whom, and for what reasons
And I have no idea how you can have no idea about that.
First, it seems the main health complaints of the husband, excess vitamin D and hypercalcemia (excess Ca, calcium) are both unrelated to the wife's spiking of his drinking water with potassium (according to their conversation towards the end) which instead can cause hyperkalemia (excess K, potassium). Wikipedia tells me that hypercalcemia is a symptom of sarcoidosis, which the husband suffered from in 2018, early in the events described in the post so it can be explained without recourse to poisoning, certainly not with potassium. Excess vitamin D is hard to explain, especially in Sweden (!) but it's hard to see how it could be caused by taking potassium.
Hyperkalemia is a dangerous condition that could be fatal for a man with heart and kidney problems, like the author, but I can't find it mentioned anywhere in the post, or in the images of clinical notes. This suggests to me that whatever substance the wife was spiking the husband's water with (e.g. KCl, potassium chloride, a table salt alternative that can very easily be bought on and offline) it was not enough to cause any detectable change in blood tests etc. Consequently it doesn't seem like it could have anything to do with the husband's health complaints.
Which were many and varied and described in minute detail, complete with a plethora of images of medical devices and material. This is the second reason that I'm doubtful about the husband's account. On the one hand it's written as if by an aspiring writer of crime novels, with a dramatic inversion of real time events, starting from the arrest of the wife and not making it quite clear what is going on until the very end and the discussion between the pair. On the other hand, most of the medical conditions described seem to have nothing to do with the spiking of the husband's water with potassium, so why are they given so much space? The husband seems to be blaming the wife for everything that is going wrong with his health, but how many of those medical issues are symptoms of sarcoidosis, which he suffers from?
The style of writing makes it very hard for me to trust the author is giving a straight and honest account of events from his point of view. If the purpose of the post is to give a clear account of what the husband believes happened then it falls far short of the clarity that would be achieved by a straightforward telling of events in the order in which they happened and without details of no obvious relevance. There can be many reasons for publishing that kind of text on the internet, such as plain bad taste, but among the many explanations is, indeed, "Factitious disorder imposed on self" (a.k.a. Munchausen Syndrome) or in any case a very strong desire to present oneself as a victim of nefarious actions, for psychological reasons.
In any case what I have just read is a dramatic telling of a story from the point of view of a person that is clearly in ill health. I have no idea what happened, to whom, and for what reasons, let alone whether this was really an instance of deliberate poisoning. The dialogue between the pair towards the end makes both spouses look a bit unhinged. The situation is far from normal and drawing any conclusion is very hard.