and then I almost died..

Ok, so this "headache plan" of mine... Hm. The verdict is still out. The diet itself is kind of a pain in the ass to follow...I'm having a really hard time eliminating onions, citrus (esp lemons and limes in my cooking!), yogurt, and aged cheeses. I mean, life without cheddar? Are you kidding me? I even sunk so low as to Google "substitute for parmesan" because God knows nothing livens up a salad, veggies, or pasta like a kick of parm. It may be that none of those things are be a "trigger" for me, but the migraine book guy advises to cut all possible triggers out of your diet before adding them back in slowly, and individually. Which of course makes a bit of sense...but has HE tried cooking without lemons, limes, onions, yogurt, feta, etc? Obviously he must enjoy a rather bland diet. Other sources I've read on tyramine in foods advise limiting quantities of those items to small daily doses. Which is sort of what I've been doing, since I cannot find things like onion-free salsa and I drank half a bottle of "citrus zest" flavored sparkling water before realizing what I'd done.

But the diet modifications are like a trip to Disneyland (or in my case, a yarn store) compared to the caffeine elimination. I thought I was ahead of the game, tapering off my coffee habit over the course of two weeks. I cut down from about 16 oz each morning (with the occasional tea or soda here or there) to about 6 oz per morning, and then...NOTHING. Yesterday, Day 1 of the Great Caffeine Withdrawal, went sort of okay. I felt icky and foggy in the morning, took three Aleve (yes three, yes I know what the label says, trust me I'm a nurse) and actually made it through the day. I was a bit irritable and drowsy and had a mild lurking headache but all in all, I thought, hey, not so bad! Until this morning. I woke up with a vague headache behind my right eye (yesterday it was my left eye), feeling a little foggy and muzzy. Had a cup of peppermint tea and three Aleve (stop judging), and went about my day. Only today, the headache and irritability only got worse and worse. I made it home by 1:30, had some lunch, and had to lay down for a nap. I woke a few hours later with the same headache but worse, tried to eat dinner, but nothing helped. Finally Matt convinced me to take an Imitrex and I even took a couple of Excedrin Migraine too. Obviously they helped because I'm sitting in front of a glaring computer screen typing somewhat coherently at the moment and not sobbing and moaning in a dark room.

So yeah. Caffeine Cold Turkey plan aborted. On to Plan B: tapering caffeine slowly. Tomorrow I will try to switch to tea and see how that goes. After all, I have an unopened box of PG Tips and it would be a royal shame to let that go to waste.