Community: Real Life

The rituals


Toni

Toni is a 19-year-old from Leicester, who is currently unable to work due to a compulsive disorder. She talks us through the ups and down of this devastating illness.
Entry: 2

From repeated hand washing to all-consuming morbid thoughts, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can take many forms. Toni describes how obsessively examining her body for cancer has come to rule her life.

Rituals are a well known part of OCD, and are more often called compulsions", meaning the sufferers feels they have to do them, or something horrific will happen. The most known compulsion is probably that of obsessive handwashing. I, thankfully, have never experienced that. I told my doctor this proudly: I don't have a cleanliness compulsion - I can't be so bad!" How wrong I was.

The things I thought were quirks in my personality, the kind of quirks everyone has, were, in reality, compulsions I had had for a very long time.

The most bizarre compulsion is my 'thing' about the last episodes on DVDs. If I'm watching a Buffy DVD, which usually has four episodes on it, by episode three, I'm feeling tetchy. It's nothing major, I just get slightly nervous and a bit restless. As episode three ends and episode four starts, it gets worse.

I know I'm going to have to get up and change the DVD when this episode ends. I get steadily more and more restless as the episode continues. I know each episode is 40 minutes, so I'm on a countdown. I'm going to have to get up in 30 minutes, 25, 20...

Eventually, usually around the 20-minute mark, I get up and change the disk. Now I can relax. I can sit back and watch four episodes, and not have to worry about getting up for a couple of hours. Sorted! Then it begins again. Episodes one and two, I'm grand. Three, I'm nervous. Four, I'm basically a bucket of nerves and shaking. Get up; change, never see the last episode.

Now, I've done this for years. In fact, I can't remember not doing it; I've always had my thing about the last episode. I can't watch them. I used to visit websites and read episode descriptions to find out what I missed. Yet I didn't think it was anything strange.

"Four months ago I developed a compulsion to check things."

Then it escalated. Four months ago I developed a compulsion to check things. Had I turned the iron off? Had I turned the heater off? I began to make lists, which I would consult before leaving the house. I'd write down 'oven, iron, heater...' etc and then tick them off before leaving the house. When I was out, and I got one of those Oh God, have I turned the toaster off?" thoughts, I would refer to my list and feel better.

Then the list method stopped working. I once drove 10 miles, then turned round and went back home to see if I had turned off the heater. I had, but I'd been convinced I hadn't. As a result I made myself very late for work and heading towards another warning.

Then there is my third, and perhaps most damaging, compulsion. My psychiatrist calls it prodding"; I call it checking for cancerous lumps". My OCD is mainly hypochondria-based and I constantly check myself for lumps. Breasts are easy. Lumps are obvious to spot there, so I only check them three or four times a day

My knowledge of anatomy isn't great, so imagine my despair when I was told by my psychiatrist that the area I was examining for stomach cancer was in fact my pancreas. I still do it regardless. I don't even know what I'm feeling for, or why I'm doing it, but I have to do it.

My psychiatrist is desperately trying to stop me. For God's sake, Toni, you'll give yourself a haematoma (blood bruise)!". She was right, you know; I did. And it hurt like hell for three days, a nasty black mark on my stomach, caused solely by my constant prodding.

Do I still prod? Of course I do. I'm checking to see if anywhere is tender, if there's any lumps, if anything feels enlarged. It has been known for me to duck out of social situations, just so I can check my breasts or stomach one more time.

Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Welcome to the world of an OCD sufferer. Now, you'll have to excuse me, I need to prod my stomach a bit more.


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