What I'm Drinking

The picture makes it look like I'm drinking a lot of herbal teas, but no. At least not these ones. As you may recall, I gave up Diet Coke for Lent, so now that Easter has passed, I thought I'd report back. Overall, my experiment was shockingly easy. Could it be that Diet Coke has loosened its grip on me? Hmm. Substitutes had to be made (and to be honest, staying hydrated is always an issue for me, so I had to drink something) so I found myself drinking lots of lemon water, hot tea (mostly regular tea, not the teas above which I tend to buy and not drink), and later, iced tea with lemon. My very favorite thing was to mix half iced tea and half lemonade, which I would do if we were at a fast food restaurant and it was available (most have this, I've found--at least Subway and Rubio's, where we like to go). (Actually, the lemonade at these fast food places is "light" lemonade mostly, so there's the artificial sweetener again, but at least it is cut by half when mixing with the iced tea). Anyway, I was shocked at how easy it was to forgo the Diet Coke. Oh, about the tea, other than regular tea, which I like with milk and sugar (but I don't want to be adding in a whole lot of sugar to my diet), I found that I really liked Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice, which is an herbal tea that is very flavorful and doesn't need any sugar at all. I was drinking that at work quite a bit before Rainer got sick (not since, because my tea bags of that are at work). Oh, interestingly, in the hospital I was being delivered trays 3 times a day because I'm a nursing mother, and I found it very easy to stay hydrated in that setting--I'd just circle my choices the day before and I found myself drinking lots of fat-free milk, iced tea, and decaf coffee.

Over the weeks of Lent, I did find that I still craved a Diet Coke at certain times, but surprisingly when I did finally have one (on Tuesday, after Easter had passed and I still hadn't had one) it didn't taste all that great to me. If anything, I'd actually rather have a regular soda--(I know--I shouldn't go there--just step away). Most of the time, now, I'm drinking lemon water (water, lots of ice, and a big squeeze of lemon) and trying to keep up the healthy habit of milk drinking. That's it. Just thought I'd report back because I am so surprised at how it turned out.

Off to chemo today with Rainer. I have to say I'm excited to take him for his chemo because it feels as if we are at least doing something. Of course I give him his medications daily, but aside from that, it feels like a lot of waiting. Today we will at least have something more active we can do for him.