What the world is like when everyone, and not just me, starts washing their hands obsessively

"Everyone is gross, so much grosser than I feared," I think (maybe not entirely fairly) as a woman who has had OCD for twenty years and now realizes that everyone needs a pandemic and CDC warnings to wash their hands frequently and thoroughly, use hand sanitizer, and generally not track germs around. I have spent …

How the Swine Flu and COVID-19 Pandemics Seem Different as Someone Who Got Swine Flu in 2009

In 2009, I got swine flu. I had just returned to college from summer break, and either brought it with me or I got it from my roommate, who got it almost as soon as we returned to school. I got it a few days later. I had barely heard of it at that point. …

Coming Back to Blogging During the COVID-19 Shutdown

I didn’t mean to take a break from blogging. It was a small break that snowballed into a medium break and then a larger one. The last few months have revolved around a new condition that I have had to get treatment for while also getting tests and procedures to figure out what is causing …

How I Balance Advocating For Myself as a Patient with Avoiding Hypochondria

(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and none of this is meant to provide medical advice. This is just my personal experience.) I struggle with being my own patient advocate and not being a hypochondriac. I know that having OCD means that I have a tendency to catastrophize and this includes imagining worst-case possible illnesses …

Fear, Anxiety, and a Scary World

Does it (always) make sense to take anxiety medicine when the world is truly an anxious place and anxiety is a proper response to some of the things that happen? Waking up today to learn that there was another mass shooting in a random place in the US on the same day makes me want …