I wish I'd learn to listen to myself.

Over the years I've really struggled with drinking caffeinated pop. A lot. Daily. As in a 2-liter bottle every single day. A few years ago, I stopped drinking it, and I stayed away from it for 3.5 years. Then I started drinking it again, because the caffeine helped with my asthma. I eventually stopped again, because the caffeine was bothering the neuropathy associated with the fibromyalgia. It felt like I was being used as a pin cushion from the inside out, and it just wasn't worth the pain. 


I'd been off it for right at a year again when Hopper broke her leg last summer and ended up in the hospital for 10 days following surgery. I felt like I couldn't keep up with the physical demands of going back and forth from home to the hospital every day, because I was ready to drop from exhaustion. It at least gave me the energy to make it through each day. 


But then life sort of exploded, and I figured I'd just stop drinking the 2 to 4 cans of soda I was drinking each day when things settled down. Except that they didn't really settle down. In fact, they got worse, and I started struggling with anxiety like I've never experienced before.


I started anxiety meds several months ago, and although they're helping me, I'm needing another dosage increase. It's getting rather frustrating. I don't know, if the caffeine is adding to the anxiety or not, but I'm giving it up again, anyway. 


I'm on day 3 of withdrawal. 


Again. 


For the umpteenthed, and hopefully final, time in my life.

An interesting blog I came across...

The other day I was searching the internet for blogs about hoarding - especially those written by someone who is trying to get rid of their own clutter. It's helpful to read how others are dealing with hoarding, but I've found very few. Unfortunately, the ones I have found are often abandoned for months at a time, and I was hoping to find something a bit more current than that.

I did come across a very interesting blog, though. It's called, "If I Were a Hoarder". I find it encouraging in a different way than I would find a blog from another hoarder encouraging. It's stories and pictures remind me of why I'm doing as much dehoarding as I possibly can - even when on days like today I'm finding it hard to do a single thing.

I drank my last can of soda yesterday, and I'm sure that plays a very big role. I'm having the roughest time trying to keep my eyes open! Hopefully, I'll never drink anything with caffeine in it again. It's just not worth it to me. Remember. You read it here first.

I'm going to go sleep off my caffeine withdrawal...

I wasn't onto anything.

Several weeks ago, I thought I was onto something. Turns out I wasn't.

For years, I drank a 2 liter bottle of caffeinated soda every single day. Sometimes more. According to the pulmonologist, it likely helped keep my asthma from getting out of control over the years, so I didn't feel too bad about drinking it.

However, 3.5 years ago, I gave it up completely. I felt fine. It took me a few days to get through the headaches, but my energy level stabilized, and I didn't feel bad for having stopped drinking the caffeine. Last October, when we got sick with the Swine Flu, and my asthma went way out of control, and I had to be put on steroid after steroid after steroid, I started drinking cola again. And it definitely helped with the breathing. I have no doubt in my mind that it did.

However, I've also had problems with it. I've been having problems with peripheral neuropathy when I drink the caffeine, and I'd totally forgotten that I'd discovered it quite by accident last summer.

We were out of town, and it was breathtakingly hot outside, and I was so thirsty that water didn't seem like it was cold or wet enough. So I got a raspberry iced tea. And man, did it taste good! We got home a short while later, so I filled up my mug with ice and cold water and continued drinking nothing but water for the rest of the day.

However, later that evening, I noticed that I was having problems with peripheral neuropathy. It was like I was being stuck with pins and needles indiscriminately all over my body. Like someone was doing a bang up job on a voodoo doll, and I was the intended target. And I never would have thought of the caffeine or the tea, except that I was paying attention to my body for a different sort of reaction from the tea. I don't remember now what it was, I just remember being surprised when I put 2 and 2 together and came up with caffeine = pain. And I didn't drink anymore tea or anything with caffeine in it until we got sick in October.

Then when my asthma went haywire and I started drinking the cola, the neuropathy didn't bother me at all. It's like my body used all the caffeine I'd ingested to help with my breathing, and it didn't bother my nerves. And I've been drinking the equivalent of 3-12oz cans of cola every day since then. That's about the same amount of caffeine in a single 8oz cup of coffee.

The last several days I've been getting sharp shooting pains like one gets when their feet get too cold in the wintertime, and you come indoors and they start to thaw. I've hardly been able to make a fist with my hands from the pain in my forearms. And even though it's been near 80 in the house, I've had to keep a sweatshirt on at all times, or I ache all the way through to the bone. I have to sleep under thick heavy covers, or the pain wakes me up.

I know that some antibiotics have the potential to cause peripheral neuropathy symptoms. In fact, I started one such antibiotic before I'd finished my steroids the other day. So here I've been thinking this whole time that my problem has been with the antibiotic. And it may be partially to blame, but I think it's more likely the caffeine. I've taken this antibiotic in the past with no problem whatsoever. The pain has come just from the last couple of times I've taken it. And both times have been while I've been drinking the cola.

I have been breathing much more freely. The bronchitis appears to be gone. I think that at this point my body just doesn't need the caffeine, because the steroids worked, and I'm breathing better. That in fact it's trying to tell me to stop with the cola. I'm listening. I've had to take a half a vicodin every 4 hours today to keep the pain manageable, and even then it hurts.

Yep. I'm listening.

The message is loud and clear.

I think I may be onto something.

For over 20 years, I drank a 2 liter bottle of one cola or another every day except during my pregnancies. My pulmonologist said that caffeine naturally converts to theophylline in the body, and that drinking the constant small amounts of caffeine all day long likely helped keep my asthma in check all these years.

Three years ago in January, I stopped cold turkey, and I didn't have any to speak of until this past October. I did have an occasional iced tea, but I found that the caffeine made the neuropathy associated with my fibromyalgia to flare. I felt like someone was sticking me with needles all over, and I'd jump every time it happened. It was miserable, but it didn't happen, if I didn't have caffeine, so I just stayed away.

Then in October we ended up with the Swine Flu at our house. I craved ice cold colas during this time, so I ended up adding a glass or two a day to my diet. Nothing like I'd had before, but enough that I felt better. I've had a few 2 liter bottles since October. I try to only drink it when I have a bad cold or bronchitis and my asthma is acting up. I've gotten used to drinking it enough that I don't have the problems I was having with the neuropathy, but I really can't afford the calories, and the diet sodas give me horrid headaches, so I figured I'd just stop completely again.

However, this afternoon, a rerun of The Doctors was on in the background for noise. My ears perked up when one of the doctors started talking about how drinking a cup of coffee or tea right before a workout helps with muscle pains. My head was spinning as I thought about the last 3.5 years.

No sense in going into great detail, but the 3.5 years included our youngest daughter having a complete spinal fusion, losing my dad to cancer shortly after his diagnosis, the tragic loss of our beloved nephew to suicide, losing another to incarceration after an accident in which someone died, and my nephew was driving drunk, significant medical issues for me, including being diagnosed with fibromyalgia and a severe allergy to dogs, countless sewer backups in the laundry room and then the pipe freezing and flooding the basement.

Stress affects fibromyalgia. And although I can trace the fibromyalgia back to when our oldest was born 23 years ago, and we've gone some amazingly stressful years with the kids and their medical issues, my fibro never got to the point of being debilitating until 3 years ago. After I quit drinking soda and caffeine. It had gotten to the point that some days I couldn't even raise my hands above my chest from the pain. Also, in the last 3 years my asthma has been the worst it has been in years and years - more out of control than in.

Needless to say, I'll be talking to my doctor and doing a bit of experimenting with caffeine doses to see, if it makes a difference in my health. However, I will be giving up the soda again. At my weight, I don't need the extra calories or any of the other unhealthy ingredients. I haven't completely decided, if I'll just trying drinking a cup of tea every morning, or if I'm going to try some caffeine tablets like NoDoz.

Regardless of the method I chose, I think I'm onto something. And I'm hopeful.