The New Baby Issue

A story of a girl with OCD.

   I was so happy when my mom finally had my little sister. I remember being so excited to come home and play with her; to see her big green eyes staring up at me and feel her little hand gripping my index finger so tightly. I love the way her hair smells – that new baby smell. Her face all tiny and pink. She feels so small in my arms, so fragile, I'm afraid she'll break if I'm not careful with her.
   After a while, though, I started to become more afraid. I got a cold about a week after my sister came home from the hospital. I decided that I should stay away from her for fear of her getting sick and dying. I didn't want her to catch my cold so I stayed in my room and found reasons to stay away from her. Then that didn't seem to be enough. I found myself stopping halfway through the construction of a turkey sandwich and thought about how colds were passed on to other people. I had touched the kitchen counter while getting out a loaf of bread, and even though I was feeling better my throat was sore. What if my cold germs still lingered on the surface? I immediately quit constructing my sandwich and scrubbed at the counter with as many different cleaning solutions that I could find.
   After putting everything away I took my sandwich upstairs and found my mother, telling her to be sure to clean the kitchen thoroughly before going to bed for the night. My mom seemed surprised at such a request but said that she would and I went to my room and devoured my sandwich.

   After a time I became afraid that I might hurt my sister in another way. By now my cold had come and gone, but the knives in the kitchen drawer hadn't. I begged my mother to put the knives away somewhere that I couldn't find them. She finally did and I gave a soft sigh of relief. No harm could come to my sister from those items now.

   For a short period of time I felt relieved. I was sitting at my desk writing a book report when the pencil lead broke. I looked at the shattered fragments of graphite and wondered how many germs were lurking on the cool gray pieces. I found myself slowly inching the chair backwards, trying to put distance between the germs and me. I stopped when my chair collided with the wall at the opposite side of the room. I put my face in my hands, trying to calm down, willing my heartbeat to return to normal. As the pounding in my ears slowly ebbed away I cautiously removed my head from my hands and looked across the room at the desk with the small shards of graphite still lying dangerously on my desk.
   I looked at my hands and underneath my fingernails. What kind of germs lurked there? My heart, which had only just stopped hammering against my ribs, resumed pounding almost instantly. I had to get clean. I had to get the whole house clean. I had to keep my little sister safe.
I ran for my desk like a mad woman and swept the broken pieces of lead to the floor, the miniature shrapnel almost landing on my foot. I rushed for the storage room and extracted the vacuum cleaner and raced back to my room with it in tow, almost tripping over the cord that someone had hastily wound around the handle.
   When I reentered my room the graphite was still on the floor beside my desk – just as I’d left it. I plugged in the vacuum and attacked. If I could just clean my room first then I would at least have a safe haven for Myra, my little sister, to retreat to when the germs started coming for her. I couldn’t let them get to her. I had to protect her. I had to protect my family. I had to protect myself.
I didn’t stop when I couldn’t see the lead on the floor anymore. I continued to move the vacuum in the same motion over and over again. I then proceeded to clean the rest of my floor. I tossed things onto my bed and dumped dirty clothes into the hamper that sat in a corner of my room. I tried not to think about what might be lurking in the folds of a dirty gym sock or an unwashed tank top.
   At long last the floor seemed to feel clean. I felt a small amount of relief. I left the vacuum in the hall outside my bedroom door and went to the kitchen to retrieve some rug cleaner and other cleaning supplies. I had to get them before they got my family. I moved faster.
I returned to my room and slammed the door closed. I instantly sprayed the floor with a thick foam of spot remover and fell to my knees and started scrubbing. Scrub, scrub, scrub. I was sweating, my breathing came in sharp bursts, my arms started to ache. My throat was still sore, aching for a drink to quench its thirst. I kept telling myself that I had to get this done – that I had to protect Myra and the rest of my family. I could worry about my sore throat later.
   In time I had finished the whole floor and I then reintroduced the vacuum to my room until I felt satisfied that the work was done. The more I cleaned the faster my heart pounded. I felt compelled to clean the room in its entirety. I stayed up until three in the morning, making sure that the entire room was spotless. I took the clothes out of my room and threw them into the washer and left them. I resumed cleaning in my room and I stood out in the hallway to admire my work once it was done. I felt relieved.
   I was exhausted and I wanted to lie down and sleep. Before I had even taken a step another thought occurred to me. I was exceptionally filthy. After having been awake for a straight fifteen hours and cleaning and sweating and straining with moving my bed across the room and pushing the desk against a different wall I was covered in filth. I wanted to run, but if I did it would only make things worse. I ignored it and hastened instead to the bathroom and the safety of the shower. I turned the water as hot as it would go, the wet needles stinging and scorching my skin and I scrubbed my body clean of all of its germy visitors.
   I washed each part of my body five times. The water slowly changed from scalding to hot. I was washing my hair for the second time. The water went from hot to warm. I was rinsing off the suds that the shampoo had left on my shoulders. I started washing my back for the fifth time. The water was now cold. Shivering, I washed my hair one final time before finally stepping out of the shower and drying off.
   Wrapped in a towel, I tiptoed silently down the hall towards my room. When I had closed the door I examined the luminous numbers on my alarm clock. It was almost five in the morning. Tired beyond all meaning of the word I climbed into bed and fell into a relaxed sleep.

   I woke up sometime around eight in the morning with a terrible feeling that something was wrong. I had had a dream about my friend Whitney from school being injured and I woke with the same sense of dread that I had felt during sleep. Still feeling groggy, I stumbled to the phone that sat on the edge of my desk as I had left it last night after cleaning it several times with bleach. I dialed Whitney’s number and let it ring about ten times before someone answered, sounding as tired as I felt.
   “Hello?”
   “Whitney? Is that you?”
   A yawn and then an answer. “It’s eight in the morning, Katia. Not to mention a Saturday. Why aren’t you in bed?”
   “I was worried about you.” I said in a scratchy voice because of the tightness in my raw throat.
   There was a puzzled silence on the other end of the line.
   “Whitney?”
   “I’m still here, Kat, and I’m fine.”
   “Are you sure, Whitney?” I asked, trying to make her admit to feeling at least a little sick to her stomach.
   “I’m fine.” She repeated.
   “Whitney, I had a horrible dream. It was –”
   “Oh, God. Kat, I’m surprised at you.” She started to laugh. “You let a little thing like a nightmare get to you? I’m fine, okay?”
   “But, Whitney, I still have this feeling that something is –”
   Whitney interrupted her again. “I’m awake now, so I guess I’ll go shower and get ready for the movies. Chuck’s taking me out to see that new thriller. Talk to you later, Katia!”
   Before I could protest she’d hung up. I placed the phone back in its cradle before the man could start speaking about trying my call again. I still had this unsettling feeling.
   Since I felt clean I decided it might be safe for me to go visit my sister so I headed down the hall and tiptoed into her room with the intent of giving her a brief kiss. Hell, I might even risk holding her because I felt so sure that I was not any danger to her.
   I peered over the edge of the crib and into her big green eyes.
   “Hey little sis. How’re you feeling?” I reached a hand into the crib to pick her up but drew back almost instantaneously. I sensed them there. They had followed me to her. I backed away from the crib. Would they hurt her if I lingered here? Myra started crying, obviously wondering where I had gone once my head had disappeared from the edge of the crib. I wanted to return and comfort her, but I couldn’t. They were here; they had followed me, used me to find her. Last night after having cleaned my room so many times I had thought that I had killed them, but the germs had only been hiding. What else did they know? Where else were they? I had to get away and lead them somewhere else. I had to keep Myra safe.
   I wanted to scream out loud, get my parent’s attention. My throat was so sore, however, that I was afraid that if I were to cry out it would tear in protest. As I neared the bottom of the stairs I heard noises coming from inside the kitchen. I felt my heart skip a beat. Hoping that it was my mom and that I’d be able to warn her and tell her to get Myra and my dad off to safety.
   When I entered the kitchen I was greeted my mother’s smiling face. But when she saw the look upon my face and heard the note of panic in my voice when I spoke to her the smile fell.
   “Mom, you have to get out of here! There are germs – they’re everywhere. You have to tell dad and take Myra and go!” I know I sounded insane and I knew that this whole feeling was ridiculous but I couldn’t shake it off. I felt like I had to do this, that I didn’t have any other choice.
   “Katia?” my mom said. Her voice was soft. “What are you talking about?”
   “Mom, you have to go!” I fell onto the floor in a heap.
   “Katia? What’s wrong?”
   “Just go!” I yelled at her. I put my hands over my ears and just screamed. I heard my father thundering down the stairs and heading for the kitchen, yelling over my screams to my mother, trying to figure out was wrong. My throat felt like it was ripping in half. I kept screaming.

   Hours and a couple of pills later, I found myself in the backseat of the car with my hands in my lap staring at the floor. I was shaking but the medication was keeping me grounded. We were on out way to a doctor and I found myself feeling curiously nervous. I watched the cars pass by us on the road. How many of the people behind the wheel felt like I did, if any? Had any of them experienced fear of this nature?
   When we arrived at the doctor’s office my father opened the back door and picked me up like a little girl and carried me into the doctor’s office, my mother following close behind with Myra in her arms.
   It wasn’t a long wait. We were in back with the doctor in only a minute, two minutes at most. Maybe my mother calling in and telling them that this visit was an emergency had something to do with it.
   I had told my parent’s at home about the strange feelings I’d been having since Myra had come into our lives. My parent’s had worried this whole time about it being jealousy because I wasn’t the baby anymore. The doctor shook his head.
   I don’t know why, but I lifted my head briefly and said, “Throat. I’ve had a sore throat a lot lately.”
The doctor stared at her a moment and, as if coming to a realization, asked me, “Does your throat always hurt when you have these panic attacks?”
   After a moment’s consideration I nodded.
   “PANDAS.” He said simply, reaching for the clipboard and scribbling on it.
   My mother raised her eyebrow. “Beg pardon?”
   With a sigh, the doctor said, “PANDAS – short for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcal infections. A type of OCD that comes with a warning sign – every time you feel your throat start to hurt, you will probably start to experience those same type of panic attacks.”
   “Anything we can do? To stop the panic attacks? Or the OCD itself?” asked my father.
   “The OCD is the panic attack itself. What you can stop is the strep throat. She’ll have to take antibiotics as soon as she feels a sore throat coming on. And whenever she experiences those same feelings of needing to clean something or call a friend when she feels like they are in danger she’ll just have to resist it. By giving into the fear she’s making it worse. If she tries to ignore it and resist the temptation she should get better. Maybe not one hundred percent, but enough that she can live a relatively normal life, which will still be difficult.
   “The first step that we need to take,” began the doctor, “Is to get you a good therapist who can help you through this period in your life.”
   We lingered there for only a few minutes while he gave us a number for a therapist who specialized in cases like mine.
I   t’s hard to try to get over something as trying as this – I never thought that I would have an issue like this. I’m not sure that I even really know how to cope with a problem of this magnitude. Ever since I started going to therapy sessions, however, I’ve been getting progressively better. I take small steps and keep trying not to bug out over the little things. I have to remind myself that nothing’s going to happen even if I do know where the knives in the kitchen are. Nothing’s going to hurt my family – especially not Myra. And definitely not me. I’ll be okay and I’ll find a way to get through this. I have to.

Author's Note

This is loosely based on some facts I read in a book on OCD from my school library.

Reviews

[J M Randolph]

You boosted my hope for this website. This story shows a lot of potential. Especially at the beginning and in the middle, we really get a sense of what it feels like to live with OCD. I would love to see it wrapped up in a different way; it might be stronger if you left out Kat's determination to persevere. Nice work.

[Jessica]

Wow. This was...compelling. Amazing.