186: What if you were consumed by a preposterous phobia?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. I cannot get over the fact that this actually happened. It felt strangely prophetic, like the actual phobia that's so obscure and so exotic. It was so difficult for me to understand how this actually happened.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 186. What if you were consumed by a preposterous phobia?

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I was born in the early 70s to parents who did not last for very long. I think they got divorced by the time I was a year or two old. Their marriage was fully ill-conceived from the get-go. I'm an only child, and my dad was pretty much absent my entire childhood. And so it was just me and my mom and my grandparents. I was born in the early 70s.

When I was six years old, my mom and I moved overseas and I spent almost 12 years living in Israel. I came back right before I turned 18. I came back to the States. And so it was just she and I alone in a foreign country, which was just a remarkably wonderful experience in so many ways. I was able to be fluent in another language and have just a wonderful, enriched cultural experience. And it was a fantastic upbringing in most ways. But my mom, she had...

a lot of difficulty establishing boundaries and maybe role delineation where she is the mom and I was the kid. She was not so comfortable with that. She used to include me in a lot of really inappropriate conversations and has a very strong

I guess, new agey, esoteric type philosophy where she believes that she is bestowed with certain, you know, otherworldly gifts. And I feel like for me as a kid, that was an extremely insecure upbringing because there wasn't a whole lot of stability. There was a lot of emotional insecurity for me because she wasn't very good at conveying, you know, like,

conventional parental basic information or wisdom. And I never felt like I could go to her and she would be able to make sense of the kinds of, you know, fears that I was starting to contend with.

I had some phobias from a pretty young age. And I remember like if I would talk to her about something I was afraid of, typically they were like health related phobias. You know, she would either laugh it off or just, you know, act like it was ridiculous. So I think I ultimately started to learn that my fears, my anxieties, that there wasn't a lot of explanation or reason or support for them.

When I was nine years old, my mom told me she had some very important information that she wanted to share with me. She was like, I want to tell you something. It's very important and I feel like you're ready to hear it. And what it was is that my mom had gone to a psychic, which was not unusual. She has throughout the years, but she wanted to inform me that my grandma, who I was very, very close with, was going to die soon.

My mom wanted me to understand that this was something that was going to happen. I think her intention was to sort of save me from it or to prepare me for it. And it was extremely difficult for me as a kid because I remember when my grandparents would call, I had to talk to my grandmother as if I didn't know that she was going to

die soon. And it just felt like this huge burden, like a weight that I was carrying because I had this knowledge about my grandmother that my grandmother herself didn't have because it only came from some psychic.

My grandmother did die in 2015 at 98 years old when I was actually 43 years old. So it was totally off as were all of her predictions and my childhood was marked by a lot of these types of events.

And she was extremely delusional in so much of her thinking, but I did not realize that as a kid. And it became very clear as I got older. But also, we had a lot of financial insecurity and instability, and we were always waiting on this next investor or some wonderful project. My mom was always going to hit the big time with some project that she was working on. And I, of course, became really strongly entrenched in this kind of reality.

And so I knew, I knew that things were not good financially and it was very clear from, you know, by the fact that our, you know, utilities were getting turned off. That was our reality for many, many years.

There was also a whole phase where my mom decided that she was never going to die and that no, nobody ever had to die. And I think this was influenced by a particular author that she was reading at the time. And I just think that even as a kid, I was like, this is, this seems like total bullshit.

There was just a lot of insecurity. And I think that I had to kind of pretty early on make sense of some of her lapses in thinking and judgment. And I think the way I did that, perhaps, was to assume that the world is not as secure and that things aren't necessarily going to end up for the best all the time. And because I was aware of that, I think it might have heightened some of the budding, you know, normal fears that I already had.

And I think it sort of made me mistrust my mom because I felt like she was my only source of stability and she wasn't providing that. And so it started to affect my relationship with her ultimately, which is why we're largely estranged and have been for literally almost 30 years.

So as an adolescent, I started having a lot of idiosyncratic behaviors that my friends in Israel to this day remember. I remember having a lot of fears about contracting AIDS. This was sort of one of the very first indicators of my OCD and my health anxiety. I literally refused to kiss a boy that I liked until he got an AIDS test when I was in high school. I don't like anything that has the potential to have been contaminated.

When I was about maybe 15 years old, I stepped on a nail in my house. It wasn't rusty or anything, and it wasn't a very deep puncture wound either, but I somehow decided that I was going to contract tetanus, and then I started feeling a bunch of physical sensations. But for some reason, I remember with this tetanus incident that I never sought medical advice.

I think I just kind of sat with this notion that I was going to die of a blocked jaw. I remember spending a lot of time just worrying about my imminent, you know, symptoms and death.

For some reason, like I told my mom and she basically told me like your health obsession is obnoxious and no one likes it and it's making people crazy. And I don't know if that was the right or wrong approach. I just know that I was hearing you're obnoxious and this is silly and your fears are goofy and unwarranted and I don't have time for them is essentially the message that I was receiving.

And so as I moved into young adulthood, I was blessed to meet my husband, who next year we will be together for 30 years. He knew from the very beginning that I had these idiosyncratic behaviors, that I would ask him to maybe taste something before I did. My husband's always put up with that, has never been judgmental about it. And that's been good because I never felt like there was anything defective about me.

So right around 1995, about a year before I got married, I would have been 23 years old. It became very clear that my OCD and my fear of contamination was no longer being very well managed.

One night, my then fiance and I came home from grocery trip and we were about to go inside the house and we lived in an alley and there was nobody else in the alley. We parked our car and I turned my back to the car as we were going in. And at that point I was like, oh no.

Shit, like I turned my back to the groceries. Now they're all going to be inedible. Like I refuse to eat any of those things because someone could have come in that split second and somehow contaminated all of my food.

And I knew that this was extremely irrational and I'm not delusional. And I, for some reason, couldn't reconcile the fact that I logically understood, intellectually, I understood that no one had touched my food, but I was so unable to still eat any of it because I had somehow convinced myself that it was tampered with.

It was really scary to me and I had no idea what was wrong with me. It actually got to the point where I was only eating a few foods, the only foods I deemed as like non-contaminatable. And I went to see a mental health specialist. I remember just sitting in his office and I don't remember his name or really much about the encounter, but he looked right at me and he said, "You have obsessive compulsive disorder." And it just felt like such a relief.

Because it just made me feel like I wasn't actually quote unquote crazy. And it gave like a rhyme and reason for the kind of illogical thinking I was happening. It's just extremely hard for me. I just felt extremely relieved. And he said, you know, you can take medication and this medication can help you significantly.

Part of my OCD is fear of like exotic diseases, and I'm afraid of terminal diseases and chronic diseases, but I'm also afraid of all the diagnostic, like the radiation or the CAT scans or the medication, all the things that would sort of help either diagnose or alleviate these diseases that I'm so afraid of. It's almost like you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

And so I remember he advised me to take medication. At the time, it was Zoloft and SSRI. I had the medication. I had it for weeks before I started taking it. I was very afraid of it.

And eventually I decided to start it. I took it in very typical me fashion. Like, you know, I took a quarter of a pill the first day and then a half of a pill for a couple of days. And eventually I realized I wasn't having any kind of allergic reaction to it. And I started taking it. And I remember one day walking on campus and it was the spring. And I remember just pausing, not physically, mentally pausing and thinking, holy shit, I feel so much better now.

I feel normal. I haven't obsessed about anything. And I'd only been taking it for a couple weeks. And it was such, oh, it was the most tremendous feeling of, oh, wow, like I'm fixed. I'm going to be okay. And I did great. I did great on it for five years.

I felt like my brain no longer could just fixate anymore. It's like it fully intercepted my obsessions. And during that time, I was able to get married and finish my college education. I was able to go back and get a master's degree. But at that point, I was really, I was focused. I was interested and really passionate about

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And then next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. And then in 2000, I decided that I was going to get pregnant. And we'd already been together for 11 years. And I did know that I absolutely did not want to be on the Zoloft before my pregnancy.

And I remember talking to a psychiatrist and I remember asking him like, do I need to get off of this all after? Am I fine to stay on it? And I remember him saying, you are totally fine to stay on it. Like, don't even, don't rock the boat. Like it's okay. It's safe and it's perfectly acceptable. But I thought I'm just going to go off of it. I'm going to go off of it. And I decided to taper so slowly off of it and did that over the course of about a month. Then we got pregnant pretty much right away. And that was great.

So point in my life, I had a constellation of fears. I was afraid of flying, diseases, medications and procedures and radiation. I had fears of driving. I didn't even get my driver's license until I was 24 years old.

And then a lot of my fears had to do with food. I was always very vigilant about like, you know, tabs and lids and bacteria. And I've always been afraid of like uncommon and exotic contaminants.

I remember feeling so absolutely consumed by thinking that I felt I had no control over. And so many of my obsessions are of the most embarrassing nature. And a lot of times that's why I think their mind gloms on to those particular things because they'd be so humiliating to tell.

For some people, they're of a sexual nature. For some people, they're about harming others or harming themselves. And I had thoughts like that when I was younger, and it was extremely, extremely upsetting and distressing because I felt like I somehow was either responsible for causing someone harm or that I actually wanted to cause someone harm.

When I'm in the throes of an OCD episode, not only does it affect my daily functioning because my mind is constantly battling with these intrusive thoughts, but also it starts to gnaw away at my self-perception and my self-esteem because

Because I start to believe that I am a horrible person who would want to wish harm on another human being and that I was somehow responsible or contributing to the worst thing that my mind could even conceive of. And I was, I was part of it. I was the reason.

I had a friend who was pregnant and she was eating from like a bowl of nuts at a party. And I was like, is that a safe idea? Because I was really afraid when I was pregnant that my kids would end up with food allergies, which they both had.

Totally fucking did. But anyway, and so I asked her, like, is that wise? Like, you have a history of allergies, too. And anyhow, she completely blew me off, which was the right thing to do. But she did end up with a kid who is extremely allergic and much more so than my own kids, like truly had anaphylactic shock. And I somehow convinced myself after her baby was born that that was my doing.

It was so humiliating. I was positive, positive that anytime her son had an allergic reaction, anytime he could potentially die, that I had somehow created that. And now with the distance of almost 20 years, I understand that there are plausibility issues with that theory, but...

At the time, it was compelling and it was humiliating. And I couldn't tell anyone because I didn't want anyone to know that I had done this. Like it was ultimately horrific. So it's dark. It's a really, really dark place. So in the context of all of my strange and exotic illness phobias, I've had the recurring phobia for a very long time, decades really. And it is a fear of rabies.

It's an inexplicable phobia, given that about one to three people in the U.S. die annually of rabies. It's definitely one of the most uncommon diseases, but...

I've always had a fear about it and dreams about it as well, which is that I come into contact with an animal and then the animal promptly takes off and then I'm left with a bite and then I have to get the rabies treatment. I've always known that rabies is, you know, 100% treatable with early intervention, but basically 100% fatal without.

And I've always been afraid of bats for a very, very long time. Bats, because they can just fly out of the sky, they represent like more of a threat. Especially had a fear of like bats in the daytime, which is so random because I've literally never in my life seen a daytime bat. I mean, a daytime bat clearly is a sick bat because that is not normal bat behavior.

It's funny because my husband actually said to me, you know, you have myriad fears and a

A lot of them are pretty common or conventional phobias. He goes, this one is absolutely fucking crazy. He said, a bat is never going to fly out of the sky. And I was like, you know, you're right. It's never going to happen. It doesn't even make sense that it would happen. But for some reason, because of my OCD, it was definitely like a legitimate, ongoing, persistent thought that's been in my mind for a long time.

When I was pregnant with my first son, it was summer and the windows were open and we were just driving along, listening to the radio on a beautiful summer night. And all of a sudden, my husband who was doing the driving, his hand was out the window. He goes, oh, look, something got me. And he kind of brought his hand in and, and I was like, what do you mean got you? And he was like, you know, flew into me and I was like, oh, okay.

And right away when he told me that, my very first thought was it was a fucking bat. A fucking bat just like flew into his hand and got him, like bit him. And I knew that a bat can bite you in a way that you literally, it's so small, smaller than the head of pencil eraser. So, I mean, you could be bitten by a bat and not necessarily even know.

He absolutely did not share my worry, but I remember getting really, really obsessed about it. My husband clearly is going to start exhibiting rabies symptoms sometime within the next week to six months.

And then I'm going to be left to raise this child all by myself. And I, you know, that's a very scary time, you know, right before you are about to have your first child anyway with so many unknowns. And I think for me, just this notion of having to go it alone was especially worrisome.

I've always been like hyper vigilant about where are the fucking bats. In the day, they shouldn't be there in the day. In the night, they're more normal because they're doing what they're supposed to do. But I can spot them more easily. And that's very scary because I can see one. And so when we moved into this house, it's much more rural than our previous house. And it's definitely on rural land. And when we first met our neighbors, who we're now dear friends with,

And I just literally asked the husband, like, hey, are there bats? Do you see bats? And he was like, yes, yes. And I was like, holy fuck, there's bats. You know, honey, there's bats. So, you know, I do. I see them in my yard and I don't go out anymore at night ever. I have not been out ever.

after the sun sets, unless I have to go somewhere at night. And then I literally make my husband walk with me. I guess I feel like if I'm aware and vigilant, um, that I am going to, you know, save someone's life or my own life because here I am, you know, looking out for the very thing that is a real threat to us. And definitely something that I was, you know, truly, truly legitimately, you know, worried about, um, fucking rabies. Yeah.

Fuck you, rabies. I hate you, rabies. It's a terrible, fucking terrible disease. So on July 20th, 2014, I had a whole work day and I was actually getting ready to go back out to like an afternoon meeting. I was getting ready and I heard that my son had come in the house.

And I heard him talking to my husband in the kitchen. And then I heard my husband raise his voice. I could tell that he was alarmed about something that my son was telling him. I was like, oh, fuck, it's those fucking bullies again on the bus. And I came out to the dining kitchen area and I was like, hey, what's up? And my husband said, well, he says, pointing to my son, he says that he land on his hand today.

I'm like, oh, stop it, please. And like, neither of them looked like they were kidding. And I was like, knock it off. Stop. What's going on, really? And my husband's like, no, really. He says that a bat landed on him at school today. I turned to my son and I was like, what are you telling me? And he goes, a bat. I could just tell that he was telling me in earnest what had happened to him.

It was the most fucking surreal moment probably of my whole life.

I remember saying something like, is this a fucking dream? I mean, because it was literally my biggest nightmares, right? Like a bad and it flew off and it landed on one of us. You know, the very thing my husband told me was absolutely never going to happen. I could basically take that to the bank. And I was, I was like, you have to tell me exactly everything that happened.

And so he was like, I was getting ready to go back into the school after we just cleaned it. We were having some kind of Earth Day cleaning of the campus. And there was me and all the seventh graders lined up to go back into the building. And all of a sudden...

I looked up and I saw something flying towards me and I suddenly realized it was a bat and it was on the back of my hand and I wasn't sure what to do. So I shook my hand and it flew away. And then we all got into the building and I was freaking out because I was like, oh my God, it left a scratch on my hand. And so I went to the bathroom and I scrubbed it for a really long time with soap and water.

And I read some things that really stressed me out even more. And I went to another bathroom on my way back to my classroom and I scrubbed it all over again with soap and water. Then I went to the nurse. I told her I had a bat land on my hand and scratch me. And I showed her the scratch. And she looked at it and she gave me a bag of ice and she sent me back to class.

So I am freaking the fuck out because this is literally exactly the kind of thing that I have been not only worried about, not only dreaming about, but like advising my kids against, you know, or about for all these years. And so, so I was like, what the fuck do you mean? What do you mean? The nurse gave you a bag of ice you took, but, but hold on, honey, did you show her the scratch? And he said, I, yes, I showed it to her.

The nurse smiled and laughed and said, well, if you're not foaming at the mouth in 24 hours, you'll be fine. And she sent him on his merry way back to his class.

I, to this day, am so upset by that encounter. First of all, this is a fairly rural county. For a nurse who's a medically trained fucking professional to A, give him a fucking bag of ice, like that's any kind of prophylaxis for rabies, and B, act like he's so cute because he's worried about the bat being rabid, is mind-boggling to me. And so right away, I was like,

We have to get you the treatment. We have to get the rabies prophylaxis treatment. I knew because I'd like been training for this moment on some level, essentially, because I had thought about it in my dream. I had experienced exactly this.

I called the school and I must have unloaded on that poor secretary. My son had a fucking encounter with a fucking bat. And so like, here I am calling like near hysterical. Like I remember saying like, this nurse didn't call me. Why would the nurse not call me? The poor secretary was like, she just put me through to the principal. And the principal was like,

okay, so now are you sure? Are you sure it was a bat? She was kind of questioning whether it was in fact, you know, a bat and how sure was I of my son's memory? She gave me the number of the district nurse. The district nurse was very helpful, very wonderful. She told me, hey, you know what? I already gave your information to the state epidemiologist and they're expecting your call. So go ahead and give them a call.

When I spoke with the state epidemiologist at one point, she told me unsolicited that she spoke to the nurse. And she said that the nurse told her, the epidemiologist, oh, yes, I already know what I should have done instead. My supervisor spoke to me about it. There was just some comfort for me in knowing that she learned. I mean, I like to feel like there's some kind of, you know, good that can come out of it for someone else.

We spoke to them over the course of the next couple weeks, maybe a few times. And he said, okay, well, look, you know, that is definitely a encounter that would require prophylaxis. He said, because that's really not typical bat behavior.

You get your first dose on day, what's called day zero. And then three days later on day three, you get your next dose. And then four days later on day seven, and then you wait a week and it's day 14. And so they distribute it. I didn't go. It was extremely stressful for me. In fact, the whole ordeal was so stressful and made my OCD so bad that I could barely function.

I, first of all, cannot get over the fact that this actually happened. It felt strangely prophetic, like the actual phobia that's so obscure and so exotic that I had for all of these years. It was so difficult for me to understand how this actually happened.

And then in addition to that, I was dealing with like the absolute paralytic, almost fear of living in a house with someone who may have been exposed to rabies. And this is hard because he's my son. Naturally, I love him and I want to provide security for him, but I don't want to fucking provide in the same room as him. And that was very, very hard for me because I had to not show him that I was personally extremely creeped out by him.

At that point, I was like, you know what? You know, we're going to have new chore rolls. And you guys, I said to my kids, are going to start putting your dishes directly in the fucking dishwasher because I was like, I'm not touching any of that shit. And so he did. He started now to this day. It's been seven years. This day, my kids are like almost the only ones who load and unload the dishwasher. And that got implemented during that time. And it was just born out of my absolute fear that I just didn't want to come in touch with any of his dishes whatsoever.

And, you know, that's embarrassing, you know, part of my OCD because I knew it wasn't rational, but I also just couldn't even deal. I didn't like being in my house a lot at that point because it just my house felt contaminated. And that's the thing that I'm really big on. Like I have these fears of like contamination and my home feels like a safe haven, like a sanctuary.

I mean, I really was living exposure therapy in my own, in my very, very own house because I had someone here who was, you know, a beloved member of the home who was contaminated. I mean, for all intents and purposes, I saw him as verboten, like he's off limits. He's a contaminated person in our house. He's like the source of potential infection.

My husband, I mean, one of the very first things that he said was like, this could be very helpful and instrumental in getting you to kind of transcend some of these, you know, like fears because you're living through the, he said, you're living through the worst thing that you ever imagined happening. You're now living through the actual fear in real time. It's not simulated. It's your actual life. It's your actual family. It's your actual phobia. And so, you know, maybe, maybe something good comes out of it.

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Once he started getting the treatments, I felt a little bit better. He had handled it like a champ. He had literally not one side effect that we ever saw. And that was wonderful. So he basically was perfectly well with the vaccines. You know, the thing about the shots is you don't get to like...

Just stop them, right? You need all the shots. And so, you know, there are protocols and you have to follow them. And I had this fear where like, what if, what if, you know, we start the shots and then we have,

a meteor hit and now he can't get the next two, you know, like all of these crazy thoughts of like, uh, what if we can't complete the protocol? And so it's like really, uh, surreal and, and strange. And just coming to terms with it was like extremely difficult. And beyond that, just the, the whole, uh, uh,

un-believability to me of this story, which truly had happened and just seemed so crazy. And it is still to this day. I mean, it's been seven years and I can barely conceive of the fact that of over a hundred kids, literally not one other child comes in contact with this bat. Only my son, my son, who has been, you know, prepped his whole life.

I mean, the epidemiologist said it happens like people need this treatment a couple times a year. Well, there are a couple million people in my state. So this is such an unlikely. It's like a one in a million for anyone right in the general public. And then it just seems exponentially crazier to consider that it happened to the actual person who has been living in such fear of this particular event.

But it took me months, you know, months to like to really feel normal. And I told this story to all the people. I felt bad for anyone who bumped into me anywhere for about three months. I think I told this story to every single person I told the person.

the poor girl at Target, like I'm getting my son an iPod because my son had an encounter with a bat and now he has to get the rabies shots. I've always been afraid that I would have a kid who has to get the rabies. Like I literally was like the whole history. She fucking did not give a shit at all. As you can imagine, she was just trying to sell me an iPod. But anyway, I was like, let me chronicle the whole experience for you. Complete stranger.

When that actual exact phobia happened, and in exactly a way that I had almost anticipated it happening, it just called into question so many things for me. Because first of all, I was like, if the most primal fear that you have is something that actually materializes, how do you handle that? What do you do with that? Where do you go with that? How do you justify such an event?

Now what? How am I going to take this and make some kind of proper sense of it in order to, you know, move past it? That question still remains unanswered.

In some ways, I feel like, oh, none of my other fears should be discounted at all. In fact, the big joke we have now is that my husband's never allowed, ever allowed that my fears are quote unquote, never going to happen. So do you feel less secure in the world? I already have OCD. I already have a great sense of insecurity. I never grew up with

any security. So I already have the sense that anything is possible and no, we're not going to live forever and no, not everything's going to end up just fine necessarily. And so do I just take this event and say, well, you know, this confirms, this actually confirms that there are, you know, that the scariest thing can happen and there's no rhyme or reason, or is it a different kind of lesson?

I can't explain how this happened, but I can say that it was my actual fear that caused a positive outcome for my kid. I like to think of this more as a story of great outcome, a story where ultimately my fear ended up in a really positive outcome for my son because he knew exactly what to do because he was able to get the treatment and is perfectly fine, like perfectly fine.

And it makes the world feel because the world has never, ever, you know, throughout my childhood ever felt like a place where there was rhyme or reason or meaning because that wasn't fostered for me because of the parent that I had. So this kind of kind of gives me some hope.

There's a rhyme and reason. And for different people, it might be different things. I know what it is for me. That's private. It's not something I ever talk about, my own personal spiritual beliefs. But this fits into that. And so that part of it feels okay. And it makes the world feel a little bit less random anyway.

I know that for me, it's like any kind of mental health affliction or addiction where it only takes one thing to fall back in to a state. And I just have to be very cognizant of that.

And it's easy for me to sit here during a time where it's not and reflect on it very thoughtfully. But I know, I know there will be another, you know, time, whether it's, you know, a disease or rabies or flying. These are things that are only around the corner for me because that is my, you know, that's my brain chemistry and that's my affliction.

I feel like because I've had OCD for so long, I've had all these great workarounds. And so even though, yes, it flares up sometimes and it's really problematic and I will have my rabies fear every so often, I also feel like I manage it generally pretty well.

for decades. Like I'm like, oh, I really have the OCD under control. But then about four and a half months ago, I ended up not feeling well. I was had indigestion, which was extremely unusual for me, especially as a vegetarian of just over 30 years. I never have had indigestion, never even took a Tumps until October. And so I thought, well, I'm something's off. I'm going to call the doctor. I have health anxiety, right? So it's also part of my OCD. So I ended up

calling and consulting and she said, "Oh, well, you probably just want to go on some kind of antacid." And I did not want to do this. I have this fear of medication in general.

But I also just have this philosophy that if you can manage things without medication, that's always ideal. And so I told her, no, I don't just want to go on medication. Like summarily, I'd like to have you run some blood work. And she did. And then one value came back almost negligibly high. But they called a couple of days later from the doctor's office and said, let's just do an ultrasound of your abdomen because you might have gallstones. And I said, sure.

As soon as it was over, I started crying. The poor ultrasound tech looked like worried for me and, you know, confused. I said, no, I'm just, I'm extremely worried. I'm always worried that something's going to be wrong. However, what was unusual is that I got a phone call that afternoon saying that they found a mass on my kidney. My kidney wasn't even under evaluation. It was just part of the organs that they were imaging. Ended up, of course, being a kidney cancer diagnosis.

If I had been a more compliant patient, right, and not neurotic and not as obsessed with getting to the bottom of things or running additional tests, what would have ultimately happened was I would have taken that medication. I would have felt free.

fully better and cured. And then I would have never, ever found out about this kidney cancer in any other way until it was probably symptomatic and therefore had like a far poorer prognosis. And so my refusal to take medication, my vigilance and my desire to advocate for myself and not just let the doctor dictate what I was going to take and for how long is the reason I ended up with a cancer diagnosis that had a very good prognosis.

Now that I've had my cancer experience, my OCD has been worse than it has been in probably ever in my life.

I mean, now I've been diagnosed directly with illness anxiety disorder, which is related to OCD. And I said, oh, okay, well, does that mean that like I get to trade in my regular OCD diagnosis for the illness anxiety disorder? But he assured me that no, it's in addition to. So it seems like now I'm starting a little collection of different OCD type disorders.

One night, my husband was like, honey, we need you. So I came into the bedroom and I was like, hey, what's going on? And my husband said, so the kid is having some issues and they sound to me like they might be OCD and anxiety type issues. What can you do to help him?

It was, you know, sort of unfortunate because on the one hand, I realized that he likely was also going to be now subjected to the same kind of unrelenting, mortifying, shameful thoughts that I have been experiencing on and off since I was around that age also in high school.

But on the other hand, a lot of times when he's having an episode with OCD, he'll come talk to me because he knows that I do have experience and that I will give him sound advice and that I love him and support him and that I do really want the best outcomes for him. Because my son has OCD, he's told me multiple times, this is the worst thing in the world. And of course, my first response is always, oh my gosh, honey, this is not the worst thing in the world. But I kind of understand when he says that where he's coming from.

because I spent so many years so ashamed of my thinking and because I internalized these thoughts and made the OCD synonymous with being a defective human being instead of having a tricky mind,

that I actually know that the best thing is to come out with it. Because the more you ruminate and the more you don't articulate and bring these shameful thoughts to light, the more progressively problematic your whole mindset becomes.

You are already feeling so ashamed of your thinking and so insecure. And you run that by a person who is anything but truly nonjudgmental and loving and understanding and gets OCD, then there is always a chance that it's going to be exacerbated by their reaction. It's only then going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy because you're going to go, oh my gosh, it is so bad.

bad. Oh my gosh, that person really does think and that can become really detrimental also. So I just happen to know because I'm old and I've lived a long time with OCD, like who my people are. And so my husband is my people. One of my friends is my person too. I know that these people are going to put it into perspective and say, really, you're worried about that? That's silly. That's ridiculous. And that's often all I need to hear to actually snap out of it. It's wonderful.

Some of my deepest, darkest fears, right, specifically rabies, and then, you know, of course, my fear of cancer, you know, the fact that both of those things have now manifested in some capacity in my life makes things really complicated. Because what you're supposed to do, right, with OCD is sort of live with the uncertainty and not necessarily, you know, give in to every base impulse you have. But it's

complicated because I almost feel like that part of me, that OCD part of me may have saved my son's life and may have saved my own life. And this is where it's just very hard for me. It's hard for me to figure out what do I do with that? I think that ultimately I have resigned myself to accept that these things have happened, that they happened in my life for a reason, that there are blessings in the fact that they happened, that I've been extremely lucky in

I have to make peace with things that have happened because not making peace and obsessing over them is not a manageable way for me to live, you know, forever. Right now, I am, you know, in therapy. We're starting cognitive behavioral therapy. So we're starting to work on them. I'm really hopeful about it.

It's complicated enough and difficult enough to have a brain that's always wanting to fixate on the worst case scenario. I mean, that's essentially what OCD does. It's almost like it goes out of its way to find the worst, most calamitous outcome. So I think for me, like moving forward, I really hope and wish that I'll be able to make friends with it to some extent, make peace with it because the alternative is just way too daunting.

If I can, you know, recognize it and live with it and not allow it to, you know, consume me, then perhaps, you know, we can have a working relationship. I have to come to terms with, you know, the things that have happened in my life and how do I carry them with me forward in a way that can be both meaningful and hopeful and make peace with my experience while still being, you know, okay with whatever the future holds for me.

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