A prisoner of my obsessions. A slave to my compulsions. That’s what my life had become. I now know that my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) must have begun gradually, but the day I became fully aware of my problem is a frightening memory that has been seared into my mind with a painful brand.

I was working as a licensed dental hygienist in Indiana. It was February. Outside it was snowing big, heavy, wet flakes. Inside, I was cleaning the treatment room after finishing my patient.  Up to that point, it seemed like any other Thursday.

 But suddenly, out of nowhere, came a terrifying thought: What if I didn’t get every tiny crevice absolutely, perfectly disinfected, and my next patient got some terrible disease from the previous patient? It would be entirely my fault! I kept cleaning the same surfaces over and over. My heart began to race. I sweated profusely. Where had that crazy thought come from? I’d never experienced anything like that before.

I knew that my next patient was waiting for me to bring her back to my room. I also knew that she would be upset because she had to wait, but I absolutely could not stop dousing everything with disinfectant. What if I missed something?  Was that a spot of blood? Oh no! I’d better clean it one more time. Just one more time. That would become my mantra.

I was forced to stop cleaning, however, when I looked up to see my employer, his skinny hands on his narrow hips, standing in my doorway. “Hurry up!” he said. “You’re running behind.”  He could not stand to have any of his patients wait even one extra minute for their appointment time. He had trained his patients well. They couldn’t stand it either.

Tearing myself away from my self-appointed scrubbing mission was excruciating. During the whole next appointment, I questioned the cleanliness of everything that came in contact with my patient. Instruments, floss and gauze, once assumed sterile, suddenly became my enemy in the fight against deadly germs. Then another thought tore through my brain: What if one of my patients gave some awful disease to ME? Like T.B. or AIDS?   My thoughts raced. My hands shook. How could I go on like this? Was my career over? Was my life over?

I made it through that difficult first day, somehow, but was so overwhelmed by the strange new thoughts, that I nearly collapsed on the couch as soon as I got home that night. What was happening to me? This was crazy. Normal people didn’t have those intrusive, obstructive thoughts. I thought that maybe I’d gone insane, but I was too afraid to tell my husband.

The next day I awoke, hoping it had all been a fluke. ‘Weird brain’ day? Full moon?  Unfortunately, as soon as I stepped into the dental office and smelled the pungent stench of disinfectant, those alien obsessions returned. I tried my best to ignore them. They’d leave me alone for a few minutes, but return with a greater ferocity than before. Why couldn’t I free my thoughts from their endless cycle?  The more I cleaned something, or washed my hands, the worse the obsessions became. They seemed to feed off of the one that tormented me five minutes before.

Trying to carry on a normal conversation with my patients became an immense struggle. I used to enjoy laughing with them. I liked exchanging funny stories with them. It had always been the highlight of my day. Now every patient seemed like a threat to me. What if they had all lied on their medical histories? What if they really were carrying some strange virus or germ? How would I ever know for sure? I became suspicious of everyone.

This torture went on for several days. I was so stressed out that I could hardly think straight. My thoughts swirled around in my head at a dizzying speed. What had I done to cause this? Was I being punished for something? I began to feel as if I was only a spectator in my own life, that these awful obsessive thoughts couldn’t possibly be happening to me. I used to be normal, didn’t I?

At the end of the morning one day, my boss came into my treatment room. He just stood there, staring at me with beady eyes. I, of course, was cleaning and re-cleaning my room. I tried to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary. It wasn’t working very well.

“I need to see you in my office. Right now. It will only take a few minutes,” he said. Then he turned around and left.

What was that about? I was immediately nervous. Was he going to fire me? I finished cleaning my room as quickly as my OCD would allow. I didn’t take time to set up the room for the first patient after lunch. The doctor was frowning when I saw him, so I probably shouldn’t make him wait any longer than I had to.

When I walked into his office, the dentist was seated behind his large wooden desk. This in itself was not surprising. What did surprise me was the fact that both of the dental assistants and the receptionist were also in the room. What were they all doing here?  I walked in and sat down in the only remaining chair available. As I sat down, I realized that they were all seated side by side, and I was facing them. I wondered why. I soon found out.

Each person, other than me, had a notebook and pen on their lap. They were all looking down. No one would look me in the eye. What was going on? I started to sweat inside my shirt. My mouth went dry. Was I supposed to say something? Or should I just sit here in misery and wait?

The dentist cleared his throat. “Ruth,” he said sternly, “things have not been going well lately.”

I just stared at him. This was not good. I waited for the giant firing axe to fall .My heart was beating rapidly. I’m my anxiety showed on my face.

“You’ve been running behind in the schedule lately. We’re not really sure why, but we don’t like it.” He narrowed his eyes, and drummed his bony fingers on his desk.

I still didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing. I clasped my hands together in my lap.

“You used to be able to keep up with the rest of us,” he said. “I’m not sure what’s changed. But it’s been causing a lot of problems for this office. Can you shed some light on this for us?” He looked at me expectantly.

“Well,” I said hesitantly, “I’m really sorry that I’ve been getting behind in the schedule. I didn’t realize that being five or ten minutes late was that big of a deal.” Oops. Wrong thing to say.

The doctor pointed a long finger in my direction. “Excuse me? You’re going to sit there and honestly tell me that you don’t think it’s important to stay on schedule?” His face was turning an interesting shade of red. He stood up and began to pace behind his desk. I was waiting for steam to emerge from his ears.

“Of course it’s important,” I amended. “But I don’t think it’s always necessarily THE most important thing.” The doctor’s face turned purple. I was afraid he was going to explode.

I tried to recover from my blunder. It didn’t go over very well. “Some patients just need more time than others to complete,” I said, defensively. “They may be harder to work on, or maybe they just like to talk a lot. I have to take those things into consideration.”

One of the assistants, who had been nasty to me from day one, said, “You’re doing a VERY bad job. I’m not even sure why you’re working here. We don’t need you here. You’re ruining this practice for me! “ Then she began to cry. With actual tears. It was as if I had committed a personal affront to her, just out of spite.

The other assistant, who had usually been nice to me up until then, said, “We’ve all tried to help you out every day, by cleaning your room, and your instruments.” This was not true, but I didn’t comment. She went on, “You’re making the patients mad. You’re making US mad. Can’t you just try harder to keep up? Why are you doing this to us?” She pouted, and looked away.
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The receptionist, who had never said a cross word to anyone, added “I’ve been getting complaints from the patients that they have to wait too long for you to see them.” She looked embarrassed to have said anything, but I’m sure it was expected of her to do so. I was beginning to wonder how many meetings they had all had, in preparation for this verbal attack. They all seemed very prepared.

I was so stunned that I hardly said anything else. I couldn’t have said much anyway, since all of the saliva had mysteriously disappeared from my mouth. I felt as if they were throwing darts and I was the unwilling dartboard. The doctor had said that this would only take a few minutes. But it took an entire hour. It was a ‘lunchtime lynching’, without the lunch.

 As soon as they were through launching verbal bombs at me, they all left the room to eat a quick bite of lunch. They’d all come prepared for the onslaught, and had brought their lunches from home. They gave me parting glares. I’m sure I was also to blame for them having to wolf down their food too quickly. I’d be put on their black list for causing them indigestion. I, on the other hand, didn’t have time to run out and get anything, so I just walked back down the hall to my room. I was in shock as I set up for my next patient. And normally after working on patients all morning, I was famished. That day, however, I felt too sick to my stomach to eat, even if I had the time for lunch. What had just happened? Was it as bizarre as it seemed?

I still had a minuscule, fleeting hope that my employer hadn’t noticed what was really going on with me. Yes, he’d cut me down to size for running behind, but maybe he’d been too preoccupied with his root canals and third molar extractions to notice my strange, new obsessive behavior. However, one Tuesday he confronted me at the end of a very long day.  Everyone else had left. The office seemed disturbingly quiet. Most of the lights had been turned off. I was still there because I couldn’t seem to get my hands clean enough. No amount of scrubbing with water and antiseptic soap was getting rid of the lies my mind was telling me. I was literally afraid to stop washing them. What if I missed a spot? It could prove to be disastrous.

“I’ve been watching you, Ruth,” he said, as he leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms.  “And the other employees have been watching you, too. They’ve been telling me things. Very troubling things. “

 Now I was doubly mortified. They’d all been watching me. Did everyone know?
How much could they know? My face felt hot. I couldn’t look him in the eye. My hands were still under the water in the sink.

Then he added, “At first I was very angry. We had that little talk with you because we thought you were getting behind in the schedule on purpose.” He frowned at me.
                       
‘Little talk’? Who was he kidding? And he thought I did it on purpose? How could he?
           
“I wouldn’t do that!” I said shrilly. “Who would ever do that?”  Now I was starting to cry, but I still couldn’t stop washing my hands. It barely registered that the water was getting way too hot. My hands had begun to look like lobsters.

He tried to calm me down. “Just listen to me for a minute,” he said. “I was watching a very enlightening news program last night. The sad little boy in the documentary couldn’t stop washing his hands. He scrubbed them day and night. He had OCD. I think that’s what’s wrong with you!” He seemed proud of the fact that he’d figured out ‘our’ little mystery. I was just struggling to stay standing up. My legs felt as if they were no longer attached to my body. But I was still washing my hands.