more odds and ends, because it's an odds and ends kind of week

1. I've been a little discouraged about the number of headaches I'm still having even though I went through all the misery of getting off caffeine. But it's the end of the month tomorrow, and I still have six maxalt left. The drugs don't lie, I guess. My prescription is for twelve every month, and last fall I had to get extra a couple of times. So having six left at the end of the month means I'm not having as many as I used to, even if it doesn't seem like it. I always get migraines when I travel, and I've traveled quite a bit recently, so maybe that's why I've seemed headache-y recently. Whatever. I was happy and surprised when I went up to get one this morning and there were still six of them. (okay, now five.)

2. I haven't told you about one of my travels yet. A couple of weeks ago I met my mom, my sisters, and Cheery-o near Chicago so we could go to the memorial service of the beloved family friend (and Debbie's dad) I told you about in November. It was a great trip--I was able to catch up with my family, visit with Debbie, meet some new people, and celebrate a life well lived (although he is sadly missed). But it also brought back boatloads of memories, both from my childhood --we moved there when I was two and moved to Dallas the summer I turned seven--and also from my two years of college there. I had one of those classic throwback experiences: we drove the route that I used to walk every day from our house to the elementary school. It seemed like miles when I was a kindergartener, but it is only about three blocks. Ha.

3. Reading Report: I haven't done one of these in a long time. But besides the Jane Austens and the Jim Palmer book I already told you about, in the past two months I've read: Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson, Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen, A Letter of Mary and A Darker Place by Laurie R. King. All recommended but none of them exactly knock-your-socks off. Then, to my surprise, I loved Elizabeth Gilbert's book on marriage, Committed. I wasn't a fan of Eat Pray Love, and Committed didn't get very good reviews, so I didn't see any reason to bother. But a friend recommended it recently, and it was available on ebook from our library, so I decided to try it. I was fascinated. Good mix of personal anecdote and research into the history and sociology of marriage. It's not anything like EPL, and maybe that's why I liked it. Also I read Tenth of December by George Saunders, which is getting all kinds of kudos as the best short story collection ever. He is a jaw-droppingly, stunningly good writer, but the stories are not easy reads. One of them was so horrifying ("Semplica Girl Diaries") that I almost put the book down. But there are a couple that save it from being too sharp, too cutting, so I'm glad I persevered. Recommended with reservations. :-)

4. As will surprise no one, it is easy for me to overdose on church. Really, sadly easy. I hit that point--with a vengeance-- last week. Poor Dean got an earful (okay, maybe two or three) about my frustration with long meetings, always having to be there, and etc. etc. Church is useful to my spiritual life, but it isn't the center of it, and I don't want it to be. Plus I am not particularly mature about being bored. But I knew when I signed up to be a deacon that I was signing on for three years of being more involved than I generally care to be, so I have little excuse. Fortunately last night I attended a "leadership training" session that restored my patience. We have a great church. But even so, I am glad that summer is coming, which means that choir and session both end for a few months and we can skip church for weeks at a time.

5. Starting just this week, I can look out the window and see green. There's still snow on the mountains, but our grass is (mostly) green, the shrubs are budding out, and the people across from us who actually have a real lawn have real, emerald green I can look at (we just have a big field). There comes a point every year where I start to believe that spring will never come, so this is a relief.

And that's all I can think of. Tomorrow is May, happy May Day to one and all. You will note that I remembered to add labels before I posted this one. Go, me.

Monday, Monday. Can't trust that day.

Unlike the rest of the country, we have had pretty much absolutely normal weather. For us, for this time of year. Which isn't to say it's been pleasant, but just that we always have crazy winter weather. Generally we have highs in the upper-20s to low-30s, with overnight lows into the teens. But then there will be storms and cold snaps and also chinook winds which warm things up into the 40s or even 50s and make you think spring is coming even in mid-January. So yeah. Around here, business as usual. But I know the rest of you aren't used to it, and I hope you're thawing out by now.

This past weekend was the designated time for finally getting all the way off caffeine. Having done both the cold turkey method and the weaning off method now, I can tell you for sure that it's better to wean off. The time I went cold turkey--four? five? years ago--was absolutely miserable for about ten days. Then it was moderately miserable for another couple of weeks. It wasn't until I'd been off for several months that I realized that I felt better and that it had been worth it.

This time has been entirely easier. I haven't had any caffeine since Thursday. Friday, I felt a little bit off, but not that bad. Saturday was pretty miserable, but by Sunday I was already better, and today I'm to the point that took three weeks that last time. So, if you have to do it, wean down first. With a couple of minor exceptions, I haven't had more than 40 mg of caffeine in any one day for a couple of months. As a side benefit, in the process of weaning down, I quit drinking Diet Dr. Pepper. I've had maybe three in the last two months. I'm so healthy I stun myself. ha.

Now we just have to see if all this makes a long-term difference in the number of headaches I'm having. It did last time, so I am optimistic.

Karen, intrepid commenter and blogger who doesn't blog enough, recommended Laurie R. King to me several years ago, but I never quite got around to reading them. King has two series going, one series of contemporary mysteries set in the Bay area, and one historical that is about Sherlock Holmes many years after the end of his Arthur Conan Doyle adventures and his new sidekick, Mary Russell. Mary is forty years his junior but it is still the first time he has met his intellectual match (well, I suppose other than Moriarty or Irene Adler).

So I've read the first of the Bay area series, and the first two of the Mary Russell series (because really, they are more about Mary than about Holmes). Definite thumbs up. I could quibble about certain things, but King's writing style is.... mesmerizing. Her books are very difficult to put down once you get into them--although two of the three I've read started slowly and took awhile to hook me in.  I had good excuses for sitting and reading the last couple of weeks, but time's up. My next class starts in three weeks and I have to get to work on it, plus I have a couple of other projects I've been putting off. So, back to work for me.

reluctant citizen of caffeination

Those of you who have been around for awhile will remember that I have migraines and that they seem to be made worse by caffeine. Six years ago I weaned myself off caffeine (see this post, and then this one), which was an entirely miserable experience, but once I was completely off, the migraines got much, much better. At one point I was down to only having 2-3 per month. So for a long time I was pretty careful to keep my caffeine intake down to no more than a couple of times a week.

But then it came time to write my thesis and defend it, and I was more stressed than I can say. And also I love coffee and Diet Dr Pepper with a great and abiding love. I was having a hard time sleeping, so I couldn't manage the drive down to UTown without caffeine. That was still only twice a week, but then I'd need to stay awake on other nights so I could study, etc etc etc. Long story short: I'm re-addicted, and have been for almost a year now. I make sure I have at least some caffeine every day, because I know if I don't, I'll get a migraine.

Damned if I do, damned if I don't. And the number of headaches and migraines I have seems to go up every month. My prescription is for 12 maxalt per month; last month I had to get extra (although that was partly due to a cold that settled in my sinuses).

Blergh.

Six years ago, the first time I quit, I did it cold turkey. I went from having a cup of coffee in the morning and a Diet Dr Pepper in the afternoon to nothing overnight. I didn't think it would make any difference if I weaned myself off. I'm still not sure it will make a difference, but I decided to at least try it this time. Maybe it won't be quite so miserable that way. I've only had about 50mg of caffeine/day for awhile now, and I was planning on cutting down even further when I got back from Texas and then cutting it out entirely next week.

But I had an interesting conversation with my sister in Texas that has me thinking. She also suffers from migraines, but when she stopped caffeine, she was so bleary-headed in the mornings that she couldn't function at work. So now she tries to have exactly the same amount of caffeine at the same time every day. She feels like the migraines that she has now are not related to caffeine (and she doesn't have them nearly as often as I do).

Hmmmmm. We'll see. I think I still need to get entirely off the stuff. My sister's migraines have always been different than mine, so I'm not entirely sure what works for her will work for me. But it's something to keep in mind, and it's tempting-- I am really dreading withdrawal. It's one of those epic family experiences that my kids still talk about in hushed voices.

in which Aunt BeaN waxes neurotic

I don't know if you can tell from the few posts I've done over the past month or so, but things have been a bit rough for me lately.  For one thing, I've started having headaches again.  Lots of them.  In the past four months, I've had almost as many days with headaches as without--sometimes just a low-level irritating ache, sometimes full-on miserable migraines.  It's frustrating and irritating and makes me grumpy as hell.  Just ask my family.

I want to be able to overcome them through force of will.  Other people don't have chronic headaches, so it must be some flaw in me that makes this happen, right?  So if I do everything right, get all my ducks in a row and avoid caffeine and sugar and make sure I get daily exercise and take my vitamins and meditate daily and and and, then they'll stop, right?  I can control them.  I know I can. *grits teeth and mutters must. be. in. control.*

But it never seems to work that way.  Doing everything just right seems to work for some people, but for some reason it doesn't work for me.  Dean is naturally one of the people who can accomplish pretty much whatever he wants through force of will.  But when I try it, first of all I can never quite manage to get it 100% right-- there are always those moments of weakness where I choose the iced latté or I forget to meditate or I just freaking don't want to exercise today.

But also it turns into a kind of moral perfectionism--an insistence that if I do what I'm supposed to do, I've paid my dues and everything in my life should turn out just right, because damn it I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to do so I deserve the life I think I should have, a life that fits in with some mythical standard in my head of what it should be like.

And that never works.  When I state it baldly like that, the flaws in my logic are clear-- bad things happen to people who are doing everything right.  There are no guarantees.  Just because you go to church and say your prayers and pay your taxes doesn't mean you get a guarantee that everything will turn out fine. And anyway, what I "should" want has absolutely no bearing on anything.

The frustration for me comes because it looks like other people can get this to work.  They do what they're supposed to do, and it works--they're healthy and happy and functional.  When I do all the things I believe I'm supposed to do, I am restless.  (Suddenly we aren't just talking about headaches.)  I want to be like everyone else.  I'm willing to lop off arms and legs and ideas and dreams to fit into my idea of what my life should be like.

But then I get the headaches.  And I'm not happy.  No matter how badly I want to be able to be happy with the things I think I'm supposed to be happy with, I'm not.  Maybe I should be grateful for the headaches, yes?  And maybe I should recognize that I don't know what the hell is going on in anyone else's life.  When I look enviously at someone who looks like they've got everything going the way they want it, it may be a reflection of my own insecurities I see, my need to beat myself up, not anything real.

Is this making even the slightest bit of sense?  Funny, as I'm thinking back over times in my life when I've had bad bouts of headaches, every time it has served to nudge me out of a rut of determination to make myself fit into someone else's life.  (or my idea of what someone else's life is like.)  And no one does this to me--it's my own determination, my own self pressuring me.  I'm fricking fifty-one years old and I'm still figuring this stuff out.  This seems like something you should deal with when you're 25.

See?  measuring myself by a mythical Someone Else's standards.  There's a phrase going around on Fitocracy and Facebook these days that I should have tattooed on my wrist so I can see it all the time:  Comparison is the thief of joy.

letter to a young migraineur

(I'm trying this as a scheduled post.  If you're reading it, it must have worked!)

I recently read the blog of a young woman who suffers from chronic headaches.  It filled me with sympathy, because I've been there.  When MadMax was around 3, I had migraines 20-25 days per month.  It was horrible. You don't really live so much as just get through it.  I wasn't ever suicidal, but I did start to wonder after awhile, why am I even alive if I'm just going to feel miserable all the time?  what is the point of this?

So I was thinking about what changed, and if there was any advice I could give her.  None of it may apply; everyone is different and everyone's triggers are different.  But I'll give it a shot anyway.  Part of my problem was having a toddler.  I was just flat out exhausted most of the time.  You hear how awful the teen years are, but to me, they were a breeze compared to the 18-month- to-4-year-old stage.  I love having a houseful of teenagers.  Having a houseful of 3-year-olds.... oh, lord, I don't even want to think about it.

But she's childless, so that's no help.  I think the biggest thing that changed for me besides my kids getting older was changing my attitude.  While it was so bad, I tried all kinds of things --drugs (amitriptyline, prozac, paxil, topamax), herbal remedies (lavender, st johns wort, a couple of special headache blends), treatments (chiropractic, acupuncture, massage), diet/allergies (I tried eliminating dairy, wheat, cheese, wine, even chocolate (briefly)).  Nothing I tried was a silver bullet, but that was what I wanted.  I wanted to find something that would cure me so that I didn't have headaches anymore.  I thought feeling 100% awesome was the baseline, the way I "should" feel, and anything less than that meant that whatever I was doing wasn't working. 

But I've gradually come to believe differently.  What I've learned to do instead is whatever little things help.  Nothing is a silver bullet.  Nothing has cured me of my headaches.  I still have them (although usually only 2-6 per month now).  You look at my extended family, and we are a headache prone bunch.  I'll always have headaches.  I've come to see being headache-prone as normal for someone with my genetic makeup.  (Headaches, the new normal.) I just have to do what I can to minimize them.

The things that have helped?  getting off caffeine has been the biggest single thing.  It took several months before I was completely off it, and after awhile I noticed that I was having way less headaches.  Not zero, but that was when I dropped from 15-25 days per month down to about 8-10.  and the ones I had were much less severe.  I've already written about that plenty, so I'll spare the details.   Going through menopause has helped.  I'm not quite there yet, but it used to be that I could guarantee having 4-6 days of migraines every month with my cycle, and I've only had one stretch of 4 days in a row since that long stretch back in January.

You see what I mean?  Rather than thinking, I've had 20 headaches since the end of January, including 4 days in a row in March, and that is bad, so I might as well go back to drinking caffeine-- I think, I've "only" had a couple individual headaches per month and one 4-day stretch, and that is so much better than it used to be.  My intent here is not to be pollyanna-ish or to sat that the glass is half-full.  It's to accept the reality that I am going to have headaches, and do whatever I can to prevent them.

there are also a few tricks I've learned.  I drink lots of water.  I wear sunglasses whenever I'm outside.  I almost always have some kind of food with me so I don't get to that shaky-starving low blood sugar stage (which almost always results in a migraine).  I can have alcohol, even wine, if I take an aspirin beforehand (even a baby aspirin). (although that doesn't work for my older sister-- wine leads directly to a headache for her, no matter what she does).  I do see a chiropractor 1-2 times per month, although she is a non-traditional practitioner and almost never "cracks" my spine. I take magnesium and Co-Q10 supplements 2-3 times a week.  Any one of these individually made little or no difference, but they seem to add up.

I guess to sum it up, I'd say I switched to being pro-active about my health.  Before, it was almost as if I was lying back and waiting for something to come along and cure me.  Instead, I started doing whatever little things I could to feel better.  It seems to be working pretty well, since nowadays I rarely have more than 2-3 headaches per month.

Whinesday

I'm whining today.  If you're not in the mood, you're excused, because Lord knows I don't like to listen to people whine.

My head.  My damn head.  Maybe I should just stop right there and click publish. 

I am so damn tired of the unending headache.  I was doing pretty well last fall-- only two or three headaches a month until mid-December.  But ever since, I've pretty much had a headache.  at first, I was treating them as migraines and taking the migraine meds.  And that works. But when it gets to be three weeks in a row with a daily headache, and then three or four days of feeling good, and then another three weeks.... well, first of all, it sucks.  But secondly, I run out of drugs, and Maxalt is dang expensive.  My insurance will cover 12 a month with a manageable co-pay, but after that, they're about $30 each. 

I only take half of a percocet (2.5 mg) with the maxalt, so my supply of 30 which I got last November is still OK.  but that's another problem.  I do worry, you know.  About taking percocet.  On the positive side, it makes the Maxalt work faster and better, and I've been taking it long enough that there are practically no side effects-- about half an hour after I take it, I start feeling warm and fuzzy inside and think, Oh! the percocet's kicking in.  But it doesn't make me sleepy or affect my judgment or make it so I can't drive.

but you know, it's an addictive drug.  The state where I live is 3rd in the nation for prescription drug abuse, so the pharmacists are suspicious.  and they should be.  It's a huge problem around here.  And the poor physicians who have to deal with it-- as one told me, a big part of the legitimate good they can do in the world is pain relief.  But they can also be sitting ducks for unscrupulous people who put on a good act and then go sell it for $5 or $10 a pill at a bar somewhere. 

When I talk to a doctor and tell them what I take, they practically laugh at me.  2.5 mg per headache (I rarely take more because too much makes me nauseated) is such small change compared to what people with true chronic pain take that it is amusing to them.  but on the other hand, it is an addictive drug.  When I'm feeling good, I have no desire to take it.  It never crosses my mind.  So I think I'm OK.  But when it's been two weeks in a row of daily migraines, it's a little scary.  Do I just want the drugs?  Am I making up the headaches so I can get the warm fuzzy? 

So then I think, maybe I should just tough it out.   Which is where I am right now.  Four days out of the last five, I've had a bad headache.  Migraine? just a headache?  probably just a bad headache, because I haven't thrown up.  One day I took the drugs and they did their usual magic, but the other days, I've just chomped down advil and tylenol and magnesium and lived with it.  Usually by late afternoon it starts backing off. 

(My three guy readers should tune out now).  I'm pretty sure it will get better when I get done with you-know-what.  Last year I had two cycles (Feb and Oct), and so far none this year.  I think I'm getting close.  And when I've gone long enough without a cycle, I start to feel great.  But it sure isn't happening right now.  Right now I just want to slam my head against a brick wall because I think it would feel better than this.  Maybe I should take the drugs.

the caffeine addict

I have migraines.  I wrote about that quite a bit in my first blog, because that was back in the days when I was having "chronic" migraines (which, if I remember right, is defined as 15 or more migraine days per month, and I had months with 20-24.  Ugh.  It was awful).  I'm not sure why they were so bad back then, but I'm grateful those days are over.  I think it might have just been exhaustion-- I enjoy my children more and more as they get older, and the early days were, shall we say, not pretty.  I was definitely not one of those moms who treasured the baby days.  Give me a houseful of teenagers any day.  Wait, I'm getting off topic here.

So anyway.  For awhile, I was so grateful not to be having "chronic" migraines that I didn't mind that I was still having 8-10 a month.  But a couple of years ago, I got tired of even that and decided I had to do something, so I got off caffeine.  I've written about this before, so I won't go into detail here, but it was an unpleasant experience.  For awhile, I couldn't really tell if it had made a difference, because getting off caffeine (of course) resulted in having quite a few more, and more severe, migraines than I was having before.  But after I'd been off for a few months, I started to notice that although I was still having migraines, they were less frequent and much less severe.  In fact, by the time I'd been off a year, I was down to 5-6 days per month, and those were usually easily handled with a maxalt and half a percocet.  I still had migraines, but they were no longer debilitating.

But the thing is, I really miss coffee.  And iced coffee and lattes, and mochas, and frappucinos.  And Diet Dr. Pepper and iced tea.  And I never did give up chocolate, although I try not to eat it very often.  So I've been somewhat careless about the whole caffeine thing, I admit.  It was difficult to take it very seriously, because I was still having migraines, for one thing, and because there was never a direct correlation between ingesting caffeine and having headaches.  I would not have caffeine for a week or so, and then have some, and nothing would happen.  It didn't really seem to make much difference.

This summer I've been travelling a lot, and that's when it's hardest to avoid caffeine.  But since it didn't seem to make that much difference, I wasn't too worried.  By the time I returned from the second trip in early July, I had had caffeine every day for about ten days.  And-- I shouldn't have been surprised-- I was having headaches almost every day again.  Not too terribly severe, but bad enough.  So when I got back on a Sunday, I decided I had to get strict about it again, and by Wednesday, I was in bed all day.  It was that bad.

After two weeks of no caffeine at all (and no headaches), I had some on Sunday. And once I'd had some I figured it didn't matter if I had more, so I actually had, um....., well......, quite a bit.  Monday I was fine, but today I woke up with a migraine-- a fairly bad one, that has not responded well to the usual meds.

So.  It's finally occurring to me that I really can't have caffeine.  I'm slow.  It should have been obvious.  I hate it.  I want to whine and complain.  Everyone else can have caffeine, why can't I?  But there it is.  Grow up, AB.  thank goodness Diet Dr Pepper comes in Caffeine Free.

The Cymbalta Digression

I try not to whine in this blog.  And there are lots of days when that's all I'm capable of doing, which is one of the reasons a couple of weeks will go by with no posts.  (Of course, there's also the issue of not having one dang intelligent thing to say, but that's beside the point at the moment.)  This past winter was especially whine-worthy.  For a couple of years now, I've been dealing with a bad case of boredom.  My kids are old enough that they don't need constant vigilance (shout out to mad-eye). I don't have a job at the moment, and with 13% unemployment in our area, it's unlikely I'll find one soon.  And for some reason, housework just doesn't do it for me.  Oh, wait.  Maybe that's because I don't do housework.

And anyway, it's the kind of boredom that's specific to someone with a neurotically busy brain.  Just having a full to-do list isn't enough to solve the problem. I spent four years being the administrative assistant in a busy office in a busy school district, but once I mastered the details of the job, I was bored silly even though I was plenty busy.  (It would probably be more accurate to say I was bored bitchy than bored silly, as my kids and my poor husband will verify.)  And even unemployed, I have plenty of things to do.  It's just that my brain is bored.

So it was with a great deal of relief that I discovered when I went back to school last semester the specific kind of busy-ness that keeps me happy-- it seems to have something to do with intellectual challenge.  I was stressed and hyper-anxious about being back at school after 25 years, but I was happy.  Almost everyone I knew remarked on the change in me.

There were a variety of reasons I didn't take classes this spring (except for the writing class at our local community college).  It took about two months for the glow from last semester to wear off, and by the end of February, I was back in the dumps again.  And it was February.  Not a good combination.  The difference this time was that I knew what would solve the problem.  And once I got my acceptance into graduate school in April, I knew help was on the way.  I just needed to make it from April until September.

So I decided to try going on anti-depressants.  This definitely was not full-blown depression.  I was up and about and getting things done.  It was just a low-level cloud of gloom.  I've done anti-depressants before.  About ten years ago, when I was suffering from near-chronic migraines, the first thing the neurologist tried was Prozac.  It made me so dopey and sleepy that I couldn't stay on it-- not to mention that it didn't seem to help with the headaches.  But I know several people now who are very happy with Cymbalta, which is a newer drug that is used to treat depression, fibromyalgia, and diabetic neuropathy.  Reading about it on the internet, I discovered that although it isn't approved for migraines (which I still have several days a month), there are a lot of people who are using it (successfully) for that.  So I was intrigued.  It sounded like a good idea at the time.

But it wasn't.  I managed to stay on it for two weeks.  I had every side effect on the list:  nausea (although that was only the first three days), drowsiness during the day and insomnia at night, cottonmouth, constipation, loss of libido.  And in the second week, the headaches started--not the worst ones I've ever had, but bad enough, and completely unresponsive to the migraine meds that usually take care of my headaches.  So after two weeks, I quit taking it.  I was still on the lowest dose, and it comes in capsules, so I couldn't really wean off it, I just stopped taking it on a Monday after having spent the entire weekend with a headache that just wouldn't go away.

And of course the headaches got worse.  I knew they would--withdrawal from a drug with neurologic consequences is a no-brainer as a trigger for migraines if you are migraine prone.  If you are the Headache Queen, you know that the price you pay for any number of activities is more headaches.  By Thursday, I was up at 4:15 a.m. "casting up my accounts," as they say in regency romance novels.  I love that phrase.  It makes something icky sound just a teeny bit elegant.

So now it is another two weeks later and I seem to finally have the cymbalta all the way out of my system. But you know, here is the good part:  in spite of all the side effects, it worked.  I was sleepy and in constant need of a drink of water, but my mood was considerably improved.  Not enough to make it worth the side effects in the end, but enough that I remembered what it was like to have energy, to be interested in what was going on around me again.   And oddly, although the side effects have gone away, the improvement in my mood is hanging on.  Or maybe that is just because it is finally truly spring and the weather has been great.  Even spectacular.

So I decided to solve my problem the old-fashioned way, and I signed up to audit a month-long intensive version of the semester-long Introduction to Literary Criticism.  So starting Monday I will be doing the two-hour commute again, and I don't think I've ever looked forward to anything more.

I'm feeling bad about posting this because it sounds a little bit too much like whining.  but that's what's been going on for me lately.

AB

Well, I'm back. But since it is NOVEMBER and November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.org) I don't know how much I'll be posting. I'm trying something very different this year and it may make me crazy. I was going to start first thing this morning, but since I was on a plane yesterday, and since being on a plane requires motion sickness meds, I am like a zombie this morning-- still, at 11:20 a.m.

I will tell you about one adventure I had in the past seven weeks, though. I think I am coherent enough for that. Starting almost immediately after I went on hiatus, I decided that I would wean myself off caffeine. (I thought using the word "hiatus" would make it sound glamorous, like a TV show that had left you with a season-ending cliffhanger or something.) I am a caffeine addict, there is no denying it. Any form-- chocolate, coffee, tea, Diet Dr. Pepper, chocolate, and... well, chocolate. I've had caffeine every single day for at least the last ten years. I know that because if I didn't, I'd get a migraine. The leaning-over-the-toilet throwing-up-your-toes kind of migraine, which I hate. I even bought caffeine in pill form (yes, they still sell NoDoz) so if we were camping or travelling, I wouldn't have to worry about finding coffee.

But for some reason I decided it was a good idea to do this insane thing, so I plunged in. The first week, I just pushed back the first caffeine of the day -- so instead of having it first thing in the morning, I would wait until 11:00 a.m., and then 1 p.m., and then 4:00 p.m. That went OK. Then the next week I cut back to decaf (which still has a little caffeine, you know). That was pretty dang miserable. I'm prone to migraines anyway, and I had a mild migraine every day. "Mild migraine" may sound like an oxymoron, but if you have them often as I do, there is definitely such a thing. I classify a headache as a migraine if no over-the-counter meds will touch it (advil, tylenol, aspirin, excedrin-- though of course excedrin has caffeine in it, so it was no good for this purpose). A "mild" migraine would be one that makes you grumpy as hell, but you can still be up and about and haven't needed to take anything stronger. (You can imagine how much my family enjoyed this, by the way. It has already entered the status of legend when my kids talk about it: Remember When Mom Went Off Caffeine? and how horrible it was?)

But then the next week I cut out caffeine entirely and it was MISERABLE. I had a "real" migraine practically every day for the next ten days. Meaning, imitrex/zomig/maxalt (pick one of those three) and/or percocet. But then finally, a month after starting, it got better. And now I think I am truly off, although I am still adjusting behaviorally (I swear it was like getting off something much worse). I still want that damn cup of coffee in the morning, and I want it bad. And I miss the Diet Dr. Pepper caffeine boost in the afternoon. Oddly, I haven't missed chocolate as much as I miss the coffee. I walk down the coffee aisle at the grocery store and I find myself stopped in the middle of the aisle, just inhaling the smell of coffee.

Was it worth it? I honestly don't know yet. Preliminary results are inconculsive. I think I have to stick with it for awhile to see if it makes a difference.

This is somewhat crazy. I admit it. Hey, I wonder if I could use this in my noveL???

SWAK.
Aunt BeaN