Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Well, this is a hard post for me to write, but I feel like I need to.

Some of you know about my fiance’s health problems. I’ll give a quick run down here. Last year, around April, my darling suffered severe paint poisoning at work. He’s had a whole array of medical problems since then, both physical and mental. But it’s what has been happening lately that has meant we have to make some pretty big changes to our lives.

This week, he was finally given his first diagnosis for one of his issues. Obsessive compulsive disorder. Of all the challenges we’ve faced since his poisoning, this has been our toughest one.

Little did I know back in April last year, the OCD had already begun to manifest itself. Right alongside the heart and breathing problems. He spent that first week in hospital, thinking he was going mad. He didn’t tell anyone that he was becoming obsessed with the number seven. He was embarrassed and ashamed. He didn’t want people to think less of him. He felt like a freak. This unwillingness to talk about the problem is apparently common with OCD sufferers, and many can go on without telling anyone about it for years and years.

A few months  ago, after I could see he was particularly agitated about something, I asked him what on earth was going on, because I didn’t understand why he was changing so much. He built up the courage to tell me that he is obsessed with the number seven. That the reason he’s up all night is because he has all these compulsions which keep him awake. He was anxious that the puppies would go to the toilet inside our house, and he began taking them outside to go to the toilet, seven times before he could go to bed at night.

I realised this was why he always seemed to keen to take them out, and often he’d bring them back in, frustrated they hadn’t done anything! Poor dogs… He explained that that was why he keeps me awake at night, tapping my legs with his feet. That he had to do it seven times, so even after I told him to stop doing it the first time because it was keeping me awake, he had to go back to do it another six times.

It takes us a long time to get things done as a family, these days. My partner has certain rituals that he feels he needs to do, in a certain order. He’s starting to feel a need to have things done a certain way, and this leads him to get anxious and irritable over the littlest things. Something that may appear trivial becomes the end of the world for him. We’ve had some moments where I’ve been scared for him, because I can see he is being tortured by his own mind.

He also has borderline agoraphobia, which thankfully means he can still get out, and I encourage it. But every outing is hard for him. He has a lot of anxiety attacks and has to stop what he’s doing to regain his composure. In his mind, I am now his ‘anchor’, as he calls it. He becomes extremely anxious if I’m not with him. He doubts his ability to do simple things or cope if I’m not there, despite him being a perfectly competent person.

I’m so grateful that we’ve finally got some health professionals doing a fantastic job of helping us. We’ve been told for over a year that he should be on a disability pension, but how do you get one when every health professional can plainly see something is wrong, but they don’t know what? Now, we have a name for one of his issues. I’ve appointed myself as his carer from the very beginning of his poisoning. Soon, that will be official.

Yesterday, I had my first carer’s support counselling appointment. What a freeing experience! I no longer feel alone in this. That all the demands in this family are mine to face alone. I don’t have to make everything ‘right’, there are others who can help me do that. I’m slowly learning what my fiance’s rights are, and mine too, when dealing with health professionals, to ensure we get our needs met.

Eventually, I’m hoping I can get to a support group for carers, but it’s not time just yet. I don’t want to force too much pressure and stress on my partner before he’s ready to deal with it. We’re still in the stage of trying to get his medication just right, and until that happens, there is still a lot of problems he faces everyday. But I am keen to talk to other carers of OCD patients.

It’s really been a stressful time for the whole family. The children have found it very difficult, and now is the time for me to make sure they’re going to be ok too. So, if my posting on here seems erratic, eg I’m posting regularly one minute, then suddenly I stop for a week, it’s simply because the way time works for me has changed quite a lot. Sometimes, getting my man to complete one task can take hours, then I’m dealing with the children at the same time, so as you can imagine, in our new little world here, time just slips through our fingers. But of course, I’m hoping we can improve on that for everyone’s sakes.

I love that I have this blog to let this out somewhere. Even if no one else wants to read it, it helps me to put it somewhere. Hopefully, down the track, it might help someone else on a similar path.

Other reading:
Ironing out the kinks in relationship conflicts

Hoping for good news today