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 long minutes
trapped in a public restroom because the door opens the wrong way (inward,
rather than the kickable outward), hoping to god someone out there has to use
the bathroom before your dining companions notice how long you've been gone, so
you can catch the door with your foot and slip out without having to
contaminate your freshly scrubbed hands by touching the door handle to pull the
door inward. How many hours over a lifetime have we spent anxiously staring at
bathroom exit doors, starting to sweat as minutes have passed, trying to decide
if we can manage that knob with our elbows somehow. You see, we know some of
you normals actually leave the bathroom without washing your hands, something
we compulsive germaphobes couldn't do with a gun to our heads. We would implode
before walking out of a bathroom with filthy hands, but we know that handle has
been touched by the care-free masses who do so. That handle may as well be a
red hot bar of near-molten steel. So, there we would stand nerves racing,
split between our fear of contamination and a deep desire to avoid humiliation
when we rejoin our friends and hear the dreaded, “What happened? You fall in?”
Now, thanks to the corona virus, my husband’s office has
installed a simple little kick bar at the bottom of the doors of their
bathrooms. A tiny change that is just huge. I could cry with joy. Not even kidding.
So while I’m certainly not comfortable with pandemics as a
rule, I have to admit, as my best friend noted (and I paraphrase), “Hey, it’s
your time to shine. It’s what you’ve been training for your whole life.”
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