it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

finally...fall! a cold front blessed us last night and we're enjoying 70-something degree weather and sunshine. these are the days where i want to laze around under a tree somewhere quiet, dozing off to the sounds of chirping birds.

but alas, i had no tree. i had a doctor's appointment. i met with my new neurologist about the $%^&* headaches that i'm always complaining about. she did her thing with lights in my eyes and tapping on my knees and asking me questions. she said that everything looked normal, but since i had been having no luck with the "triptan" medications (imitrex, zomig, maxalt, etc.), she wanted me to start taking something on a daily basis for headache prevention. fine. no problem. but then she dealt the fatal blow. no more diet coke. i must wean myself from the fluid of life and go at least 2 weeks without it to see if caffeine is a trigger.

i spoke to a friend of mine afterward and she had a very logical, scientific idea. switch to diet coke with splenda. see, aspartame, the sweetener in regular diet coke, is a known trigger for migraines. if i quit eating/drinking anything with aspartame for a while and the headaches get better, then voila! i get to keep my diet coke, if in a modified form. now, if my experiment doesn't work, i'll have to stop with caffeine altogether. and then i'll have to find a new name for my blog - perhaps "the art of bitchy caffeine withdrawal."