Fear Can Make Us Small

Fear can make us small. It can make us paranoid, nervous, suspicious, unfriendly, close-minded and all these things that I don’t want to be. My anxiety and OCD means that I get scared a lot. Ordinary things that don’t scare other people scare me. Some days I’m more scared than others. Some days I have …

My Experiences with Telehealth

When all the cancellations started, at first I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my appointments. Some of them were just canceled outright and for others, I had the option to meet via phone or zoom. Luckily, I have health insurance that covered them like a normal appointment so it was an option …

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 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 …

When Everything Feels Exhausting

Lately, I’ve been beyond exhausted. Fatigue, exhaustion, and tired: nothing seems to cover how worn out I actually feel. I’ve had almost all of my IV iron treatments and I still feel wrung out like an old washcloth. I know it is normal for some people not to feel better until all of the treatments …