Living with food allergies

First, I'd like like to say "Whoops!" about the few ah, weeks, that I haven't posted. I did really well for a while there but there is nothing like the end of a quarter (semester, etc) to put the rest of your life on hold.

This is my final week of classes, and I wanted to tell you about something nifty I put together.

The first thing your doctor asks you to do when you complain of terrible headaches is keep a food diary. I've always been really terrible at this. I'm really great at forgetting to write it down, and I've awful at remembering what I ate three days ago; worse at remembering how I felt. Often I'll realize only retrospectively that I've had a headache for a week.

Recently a friend of mine started having awful headaches too, and she started keeping a diary of medications, procedures, etc. She urged me to do the same, but I think the ship has really sailed there. I've been dealing with these headaches for six years now. 

But that doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea. I set up a google form for myself, and I've successfully used it for three or four days now. I love it because I'm on my computer so much, it doesn't take long to check in with it a few times a day. 

I have it set to ask me what time of day it is, my level of headache pain, what I've eaten since I last checked on, if I'm dizzy, how I slept, and I have an etcetera spot, for comments.

Then the results are put in a spreadsheet that looks like this. So I can scan the results for where the pain level spikes, then scan back over a few days to see if there is a pattern in what I eat before abnormal pain levels. I wish I'd thought of this years ago!