Brace Yourself: A blog about pain.

Bears: Still a thing. It's shocking how bad normal people are at being germaphobes. I swear, you're a bunch of amateurs, spraying all of your groceries with bleach and  your mail with Lysol, leaving it all out on your back deck for three days before consuming (these are actually things I've seen and I have been trying *not* to read the crazy stuff because I don't want to trigger my OCD.) Have you forgotten that bleach is not for human consumption and when you spray it into that absorbent box of cookies you are going to eat soggy, bleachy mouthfuls of yuck? That Lysol is a liquid made up of solvents (it's right there in the name for cripes sake.) dampening the paper, lifting the ink, rendering your mail unreadable? (Any Good Girls fan could have clued you in, if you asked.) And just because there's a new guy in town doesn't mean you forget about all the other microbes that can kill you. Someone was throwing around e.coli's name like it was nothing com...

As a person who is pretty open about her OCD diagnosis, and is known to be a professional-grade germaphobe, it's no surprise that I get a lot of questions about how I'm weathering the current viral unpleasantness. I also have several chronic pain conditions (including a hypermobility disorder, hence the bracing blog title (get it? Hyuk!)) that also add spice to the mix. So medically, my perspective is somewhat unique, or at least a little outside of the average. So if you're ready... To my fellow OCD-ers and germaphobes, this is our moment. We've been waiting our whole lives for the rest of you normal people to start washing yourselves. I find it a bit disturbing that adult human beings are just now learning how to wash their hands properly, to stop gripping each other's grimy hands in greeting, and not to touch their faces all willy-nilly. Left to their own devices, people are gross. It's just a fact. How many of us, the hyper-germ-aware have spent lon...