How I found out I had OCD

March of 2024, I found myself in my primary care physicians office once again. After spending several years – five to be exact – of avoiding doctors of any sort, it felt as if I had spent more time in medical buildings than my own home this year. It began with a simple checkup—a routine physical for a thirty-three-year-old mother of three – which proved to not to be as terrifying as I imagined. My doctor, a short, black woman around my own age, was easy to talk to, she listened and didn’t judge; I liked her. Dr. P., was down to earth, but upfront in a “I genuinely give a shit” kind of way that I appreciated. The check-up went great and left me feeling reassured that I could go back and tell my new favorite doctor, a few concerns I had about the weird shit my body was doing. Things like night sweats, bouts of shortness of breath that seemed to come out of no-where, irregular periods, and two strange lumps –one under my jaw, and one in my left breast.

I know what you’re thinking – at least I assume I know what you’re thinking- I know what I was thinking; shit, I have fucking cancer. The thought “I have cancer” repeated over and over and – you get the point. Dr. P. checked out my strange lumps and was concerned as well – double shit. The good old doc ordered a full bloodwork panel, as well as an ultrasound of my neck and boob region.

 Cancer… the word kept swirling around my mind. I couldn’t think about anything else – I constantly checked my body for any other anomalies. Sleeping was a nightmare, literally! I was already sweaty and prone to nightmares before my impending doom, but things can always get worse evidently. The ultrasound for my neck goes alright. Theres a large swollen node, but it looks healthy at least. Diagnosis – lympthopathy, no big deal they tell me. Okay, sure, I guess. I mean I don’t love the word lympthopathy, but the doctors are telling me basically I just have a weak immune system, and this is the result. On to the mammogram, I go! I wasn’t planning on experiencing this procedure until I was forty and at the time I was only thirty-three years old, so understandably, in my opinion, this is not normal and I am scared. The staff at the breast center are lovely – so comforting and reassuring – the entire FOUR hours I am there. Is this supposed to take this long? Why do I have to keep going back into the x-ray room, so they can get a better look? Finally, I am told to put my shirt back on and wait in a private office for the oncologist to come and speak to me.

I know what an oncologist is; I spent three months back in 2014 seeing one with my dad when he was going through chemo and radiation therapy for liver cancer. Big Bill Bartley wasted away over those twelve weeks, until a urinary tract infection went unnoticed leading to his entire body shutting down. Twenty-three years old, seven months pregnant with my first baby, and the decision to put my dad on life support or just “make him comfortable”—the medical staff’s way of saying “we’re going to give him so much morphine so he can’t feel himself dying”—was placed solely on me. My dad had always said he NEVER wanted to live off machines, so I made the toughest decision of my life to let him go. His oncologist had LITERALLY called me two whole days after he had died to ask why I hadn’t brought my father in for his scheduled radiation, and I had to say, “cause he’s dead Linda.” That didn’t leave me with an opinion of oncology doctors that inspired hope. Now I’m sitting in a room with this guy, some cancer doctor man, while he explains that the mammogram showed a very suspicious calcified mass deep in my breast tissue up against the chest muscle.

“This is very serious, why are you smiling?”, Mr. Doctor asks me. He’s clearly annoyed by me and probably thinks I am an idiot. To be fair to him, I was wearing two different shoes at that moment and apologizing to him for having something wrong with me. I hadn’t even noticed until I was sitting there staring at my feet that I wore one white ADIDAS croc on my left foot and a sunflower-rooster combo croc on the right one. I guess I had been so anxious that morning I hadn’t paid attention to what shoes I was putting on.

“Just a nervous habit, sorry.”, is my reply to him. I apologize more than is socially comfortable for anybody when I feel awkward. He explains I will have to come back for a biopsy as soon as possible. Righty-o doc, let me schedule that before I leave – next appointment available – two months from now. How lovely is that? Eight weeks of just wondering if I have breast cancer or not, super awesome. Naturally, I managed the anxiety of knowing something was wrong but not specifically what it was, very calm and rationally… ha! As if. No, what I did was silently obsessed over it in my mind. I imagined all the worst-case scenarios but would make nonchalant remarks and jokes about the situation aloud to friends and family. I didn’t do this for their feelings; they were allowed to freak out all they wanted to if you asked me. I couldn’t admit I was terrified because in my mind, if I did then that would absolutely guarantee I would have breast cancer. It would be like asking for it.

I believed that just thinking about something and saying it loud could make things come true. A lot of people believe in manifestation, and I’m not saying that isn’t possible necessarily, but I have come to learn – through months of therapy – that our thoughts and words don’t control the universe and its events. Before being diagnosed with OCD, I was someone who controlled every word I spoke and action I committed out of fear of making bad things transpire. I picked up every penny I saw, recited the “find a penny pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck” rhyme three times in a row before bringing the penny home and placing it a special jar; not because I thought I would have good luck, but because I believed if I didn’t then someone I loved would die. I checked clocks every 43 minutes -- all the clocks -- to make sure the time was real and not something I was hallucinating, making me late to something like picking my kids up from school and allowing them to be murdered. I had to say “be careful driving” every time I spoke to my husband at work, not because he’s a reckless driver, but because if I didn’t, I would be the reason a drunk driver would hit him. I had nightmares every single night of my life, going back as long as I can remember, and I’d wake up not sure if my nightmares were real or not. I would spend the first hour upon waking  trying to figure out if the nightmare had been my real life and my conscious hours were the dreams. If I thought mean things about people, I would be over come with guilt that I secretly wanted that person to die, and to get the “evil” out of me I would make myself throw up. Years and years of this compulsion has led to severe tooth decay despite never having a cavity and brushing my teeth up to seven times a day. Teeth brushing being another compulsion I had developed in response to the belief that I had to be clean inside and out to prove to the universe that I deserved to be alive. The list could go on for pages of all the compulsions I had acquired throughout my life, but I don’t have to patience to type them all out.

The day of my breast biopsy finally came. As the nurses prepared me for the procedure I tried my best to act as if I was not concerned about it in the least. I smiled my biggest smile when talking to the medical staff and tried to quietly read a book when they would leave the room. Reading, drawing, and painting were the very few activities that had been my escape from my anxiety. I could tune out my own thoughts and get lost in words or colors. This time however, the letters on the pages of Pride and Prejudice looked like incoherent nonsense, and my internal monolog screamed at full volume that I was doomed to wither away like my father had from cancer. A nurse came in to check on me, and noticed I was sweating and shaking. She felt my forehead and checks, then asked if I was feeling alright. I told her I was a “little hot” but didn’t know why. She left the room and from behind the curtain I could hear her tell another nurse that I was having a panic attack. They came back with in minutes with handfuls of ice packs, a bottle of water, a weighted vest, and an eye mask for me. They placed the ice packs on my forehead, back of my neck, chest, and under arms. The weighted vest felt like someone was giving me a hug, and even though I couldn’t drink the water, unscrewing the cap and screwing it back on gave me something to do with my hands. I was hesitant to put the eye mask on, I didn’t like the idea of not being able to see what was happening, but they assured me that I would feel better not seeing the doctor or the biopsy equipment when it was time for the procedure. I was wheeled in on a big chair into the room for the biopsy, and the nurses never left my side while the doctor told me what was going to happen. I began to shake again, until one of the nurses held my shoulders and the other placed her hands over my ears. The machine was going to be loud, she explained, and she thought it would be helpful to block as much of the noise out for me. The biopsy only took a few minutes thankfully. I felt exhausted afterwards, I can barely remember them helping me get dressed or walking me out to my husband in the waiting room. What I remember best was the older nurse asking if I drank wine ever and telling her I liked cabernet.

“Then skip the Tylenol and have a glass of red wine when you get home and take a long nap,” the head nurse told me. My husband stopped on the way home and grabbed my favorite brand of wine JOSH. I had one glass before passing out in bed for hours. When I woke up at first, I was groggy and confused but not in any pain; that was until I sat up and felt as if someone had punched me in the chest repeatedly. I couldn’t lift my left arm at all, and I was nauseous. My husband brought me two Tylenol and water and told me to go back to sleep. Surprisingly I was able to. The next day he stayed home from work so I could continue to rest, and for the first time I admitted to him how scared I truly was. I cried that I didn’t want to have cancer, or die, and leave him and the kids. I didn’t want to cease to exist, what if everything else stopped existing if I wasn’t able to perceive it? I know that sounds very egotistical. Believing that all of existence was hinged on my awareness of it, and I want to be clear that I do not think I am the center of the universe of the glue that holds reality together. I am afraid of death – and now I know that OCD takes my fears and builds them into unrealistic paranoias – and the uncertainty of what happens after death was to much for me to comprehend.

It didn’t take long for the results to come back. I went in on a Monday for the biopsy, and by Friday the medical center had called me to go over the findings… BENIGN. There were a few small, calcified tumors, but they were all benign the nurse who had recommended the wine was telling me, and I could hear her smiling over the phone. My immediate reaction was overwhelming relief and joy. I called my husband, his mom, my brother and my best friend to tell them the good news. I was going to be okay! Later that night however, the relief I felt started to fade away, and a new sense of unease crept in. I had spent weeks worrying that something was seriously wrong with my body. I had felt that something wasn’t right but had been wrong. So, what was wrong with me? Why was I so anxious and scared all the time? Why didn’t I feel healthy even with the evidence that I was? I went back to Dr. P., to talk about it. For the first time I told her everything, all the fears and emotions and thoughts that something was wrong, and the things I did to try and make that feeling go away without success. Dr. P., sat down in her chair and pulled herself closer to me so she could put one hand on my knee as she spoke.

“I think you might be dealing with OCD,” she said sympathetically. I wanted to argue with her; there was no way I had OCD, but I didn’t. I let her words sink in and rattle around my brain for a few moments.

“Okay. So, what do I do now?”

“First step is getting in touch with a psychiatrist that specializes in OCD. Then they will help you get the proper medication and recommend you a therapist who also works with OCD,” she told me. I went home that day and spent the next several hours researching psychiatrists in my area. It was surprisingly easy to get a virtual appointment with one that same week, and after an hour of questions, she agreed that I had OCD. She gave me a prescription for Zoloft, and a recommendation for a talk therapist. By the following week I had my first session with a therapist who not only specialized in patients with OCD, but she was also diagnosed with the disorder. It was hard learning that for thirty-four years many of my thoughts had been controlled by OCD without me knowing. We talked about more than just my obsessions and compulsions, but also traumas I had never acknowledged or admitted to anyone and how they fed into my anxiety. Two months in I cried for the first time, and my therapist said she was proud of me for allowing my true emotions to come to the surface. I spent a lot of time in bed after therapy sessions, mentally exhausted and drained. Sometimes I felt frustrated that my progress wasn’t moving faster, I wanted to be “cured” –even while constantly being told there is no cure to OCD – only remission. With my therapist we came up with a plan using E.R.P, exposure response prevention therapy. Essentially, the plan was to identify the obsessions, acknowledge the compulsions, and then challenge them. Little by little I would depend less on the compulsions, realizing they didn’t make the anxiety go away, but in fact reinforced it. I had to accept that the process was a slow one, and something I would have to work on consistently throughout my lifetime. That was a hard pill to swallow, even harder than the literal pills I was now taking daily – I feared taking any prescription medication would lead to drug addiction – like it had for my mom, but I don’t worry about that too much anymore, thanks to the therapy of course.

I still meet with my therapist every other week, and the psychiatrist once a month. I’ve gotten to the point where it’s much easier for me to identify when a thought I have is becoming an obsession, and I let them come in, challenge it using logic and fact, then let it go with preforming as many compulsions. I still have days and weeks when OCD gets the best of me, but I try to remember that progress is not linear, and setbacks are normal. I also have been able to see the good parts of my disorder, a contradiction I am aware of since the “dis” in disorder stands for bad. OCD makes me a more empathetic individual, because I think more deeply than most people do about how people around me feel, and I always want to understand why they are behaving the way that they do. I have a deep desire to know facts about almost everything, and this makes me a more open minded and knowledgeable person. My children feel safe and understood in my presence because I refuse to make the same mistakes my parents made raising me. I keep them safe and healthy, but most importantly I make sure they know how much they are loved and valued, because I think about them damn near constantly.

It’s been one year since I learned I have OCD, and in that time, I have learned a lot about it and myself. Some people think OCD is a quirky personality trait that just means someone is stubborn and likes things orderly and neat, and that can be a frustrating stereotype to refute during conversations. Millions of people around the world suffer from various forms of OCD, and I can assure you, it rarely is about liking your closet to be color-coordinated or making sure the throw pillows on your couch look aesthetic like Instagram influencer’s photos. It can be an all-consuming nightmare that steals precious time out of your life and isolates you away from friends, family and the world around you. I personally felt like I was going insane slowly my whole life, and there was no escape from the fear I lived in, but each day I challenged that belief a little more adamantly and began to believe that I can live life to the fullest. OCD wants me to control the universe to feel safe, but being in control of OCD has allowed me peace of mind, finally, and I can’t wait to see what thirty-five has in store for me.