Links to Helpful Posts on This Blog

Even though I’m no longer blogging here, I want to keep the blog up for anyone who might find help and encouragement in the posts. 

Below are links to some of the posts that seemed to be the most helpful to readers in the past, and which seem to sum up what my intentions were in starting the blog—to helps others with OCD and other mental illnesses know they are not alone.


“The Importance of Getting Treatment for Mental Illness”

You can find my thoughts on getting treatment for OCD and other mental illnesses in this post. I also provide links to helpful information.


“Top 5 Things That Have Helped My OCD”

There is help for OCD, and I hope you will seek advice from medical professionals on how you can treat your OCD.


“Things I Would Tell My Younger Self: Things Will Get Better”

I know it’s hard to believe that you will get better, that you are not alone in your challenges with OCD. But read this letter I wrote to my younger self. I’m writing it to you, too.


“Reading OCD”

You worry that you haven’t read a passage in a book or article “well enough” and feel compelled to read and reread again and again.


“Hit-and-Run OCD”

You know intellectually that you haven’t hit someone with your car or caused an accident. But you feel like you may have. So you feel compelled to turn the car around and check to be sure you haven’t caused harm. You may even avoid driving.


“Public Bathrooms and Contamination OCD”

You’re afraid of touching or even seeing something you think is dirty, unclean, and covered in germs.


“OCD and Making Decisions”

If you have OCD, you are challenged by uncertainty. You worry about things that other people may never even think about. Sometimes this uncertainty affects your decision-making experiences.


“Counting: One, Two, Three”
A compulsion to count is one way OCD can present.


“OCD: Picking Up Sticks”

Checking OCD can take many forms, including checking for things you’re afraid may hurt others.


“The Lights at Work: Are They Really Off?”

If you compulsively check to make sure the lights are off, try this method of coping with the anxiety.

What I want you to know about #RealOCD

It’s more than just wanting your closet to be color-coded. It’s more than keeping your things neat and in place. It’s more than insisting on keeping a clean house.

It’s a serious mental health disorder that disrupts your life, gets in the way of doing the things you want to do and need to do. It’s a serious disorder that can take those things above—the color coding, the neatness, the cleanliness—and make them into obsessions that can only be quieted by compulsions, repeated behaviors that make no sense from an outside perspective.

Real OCD can look like this: Thoughts tell you that if you don’t wash your hands perfectly, you will spread germs and someone will die. So you carefully wash your hands with soap and water, again and again and again, until you get a satisfied feeling and can stop. But two hours and gallons of water have passed, and the satisfied feeling is temporary. Soon, you again think your hands are dirty and you are going to kill someone with the germs. And it’s back to the sink.

Real OCD can also look like this: You cooked pasta for dinner. You turned the stove off. Or you think you did. You don’t remember doing it. Or you remember doing it, but not doing it the “right” way. You can’t stop thinking about it. If you didn’t turn off the stove, then it could stay hot. Maybe it would even cause a fire. Your apartment building would burn down and people would die and it would be your fault. So you check the stove to make sure it’s off. You stare at the stove. You turn the knob on and off, on and off, on and off, on and off. Finally, you hear the “click” that lets you feel satisfied that the stove is truly off. But three hours have gone by, and your anxiety is making you cry in frustration.

Real OCD manifests in different ways. You may be obsessed with cleanliness, and others may be obsessed with counting. You doubt things other people never think about. You compulsively do things in an attempt to be sure that all is well. You know the obsessions and compulsions make no sense. But you can’t stop having the thoughts. You can’t stop doing the compulsions.

What I want you to know about OCD is that it’s a ball of anxiety that fills you with frustration and depression and hopelessness and fear. It’s a swirl of thoughts that won’t calm down, won’t let you rest for just a little while.

Most of all, what I want you know about OCD is that you are not alone with it. And there are treatments available that can help you live with the disorder. I got treatment, and it made a world of difference. Talk to your doctor or the website of the International OCD Foundation for more information.

Oct. 7 – 13 is OCD Awareness Week!

Goodbye for now

Dear readers,

I have thought about this for a long time and done a lot of journaling and plain soul-searching. I have come to the conclusion that at least for now, I’m discontinuing posts on this blog.

I started this blog in November 2011, and I’ve since made many friends in the mental health advocacy world and in the blogging world itself. I have learned so much more about myself and the disorder that I initially wrote about: OCD.

I treasure each one of you who have followed me along the way.

As you know, I haven’t written much this year. I felt like I had nothing to say. And I realized and finally admitted to myself that I wanted to follow another passion of mine, a passion that I was writing about more and more on this blog: my love of animals, especially cats.

I am starting a new blog called Following Cats, located at http://www.followingcats.com/. I published my first post today. If you are interested, please go over and see if it’s a blog you think you might like to keep up with.

I consider many of you friends, and I hope not to lose touch with you. I will be coming by your blogs.

Thank you for the years of support and encouragement you have given me. Thank you for helping me through many dark times. Thank you for connecting with me. You have been gifts to me.

With love and peace,

Tina

Volunteering

One thing that has kept me busy for the last few months is helping the local nonprofit that works with our county animal shelter get its new website up and running.

They put out a call for a volunteer. It seemed like a way for me to consistently help a cause and a group that I care about.

I have a hard time when I’m in the county shelter. No shelter is a good place for an animal. And the one in my county is too small for the work that needs to be done. Seeing the cats in cages in a small room is hard.

We adopted our Abbey from that shelter.

This is Abbey in her cage at the shelter before we adopted her.

Friends of Campbell County Animal Shelter is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that works in partnership with Campbell County Animal Control. Members do things that the staff of Animal Control just wouldn’t have the time to do. They help facilitate fostering and adoptions and network to find as many adoptable animals as possible homes.

They walk the dogs, cuddle the cats, do assessments of their personalities, socialize them, get them vet care, etc. It’s harder for me to do that. So I volunteered to set up the new website and maintain it.

The move of the website to a new content management system was not easy, but Rescue Groups, the new web host, had great support. We were nervous as we waited the five days or so for the domain to transfer. But the transition was relatively smooth.

I’ve learned things I never would have otherwise learned. And I’ve seen how so many volunteers, who have jobs and families and their own pets and their own lives outside their volunteer work, come together to help the animals of Campbell County.

If you’d like to see the new website, it’s HERE.

Where I work, what I do

I started a new job on May 1, and I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to tell you how that’s going. So I thought I’d use today’s post to catch you up.

I am a public information specialist for a local government, Campbell County. I am the assistant to our public information officer. I work in Rustburg, the county seat, in the Haberer Building.

The building I work in.

I am enjoying my job and am happy for the transition from the newspaper job to what I’m doing now.

I do a lot of different things, but here are a few:

·         Update the county website

·         Update the employee portal (intranet)

·         Make graphics for the website and portal

·         Write public service announcements and media advisories and send them to local media

·         Interact with local media and find information for them

·         Help in responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests

·         I do a lot of editing

·         Take photos at county functions

·         Help with making presentations, crafting messages

·         Update the Public Safety Facebook and Twitter accounts

·         Lead the Web Content Authors group (those in other departments who update their pages on the website)

We are in the midst of transferring to another web platform for the county website. It will be so much better than what we have now. Right now, some people in other departments update their pages on the website. Once the changeover occurs, I will be doing the bulk of web updates.

I do a lot of writing, communicating, and creating with this job, and there is a lot of variety to each day. So I am enjoying it.

A view of some of the Campbell County buildings in the government complex.

I’m in the county administration office with my supervisor, the county administrator and his assistant, the clerk of the Board of Supervisors, the staff attorney, and the director and the assistant director of Public Works and their assistant. It’s a good group of hard-working and dedicated public servants.

I don’t miss the newspaper at all. I’m working full time where I am now, but the hours are regular and I rarely have to work nights or weekends. I work 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., so I’m home by 5:30 most evenings, which is hugely important to me. I don’t feel like I have to constantly be tuned into what’s going on around me in case there’s a story I need to cover. That is so good for my anxiety.

I feel very fortunate to have such a wonderful supervisor and to be doing work that I enjoy.

Friends, what has been your favorite job? Or do you think it’s still in your future?

Plucky Abbey

Abbey, the tiny girl we adopted from the county shelter in April, has been a wonderful addition to our family.

You may remember when I was still blogging in May that Abbey seemed to have some health issues. The vet would not spay her because she was anemic and her white cell count was also low.

I don’t know how many times they took her blood from May through July. They tested it there in their office and sent it to an outside lab for testing. She kept showing up anemic. The vet believed that she probably had cancer or perhaps a genetic problem.

All the while, Abbey was racing around the house, jumping, playing. Bright eyed.

I was convinced, as was Larry, as was the vet, that something was probably seriously wrong with her. But all the tests the vet ran came back negative for problems. So the vet referred us to the small animal hospital at the veterinary school at Virginia Tech for a bone marrow aspirate. We would get a definite answer from that, she said.

We took her there on July 21. The vet/professor and students that examined her were puzzled.

“That’s a healthy cat,” the vet/professor said.

Before doing the bone marrow test, they said they wanted to test her blood first. I was sure they would find the anemia. I had no reason to believe they wouldn’t.

They took her back for the procedures, and Larry and I wandered into Blacksburg to tool around and eat. It was going to be a long day.

As we were finishing up our lunch, my cell phone rang. The vet school said Abbey was ready to be picked up. That she was fine.

When we got back to the hospital, they told us that Abbey’s red cell count was well within normal limits. She was not anemic. Her white cell count was low, but the vet/professor said he was not worried about that in a cat so young.

Larry and I were practically speechless. We expected to hear many things that day, but not that our Abbey was healthy.

We asked how she could have shown up anemic over and over. They said that they took her blood directly from her into the lab. They hypothesized that the sedation she was sometimes under at the local vet’s may have skewed the results. Or not enough blood was taken and the results were skewed by the substance that preventing clotting in the tube. So even the outside lab showed skewed results.

It took us a while to process that Abbey was OK. We were overjoyed. Abbey had her spay in August and has gained weight. She’s still an active little girl.

And yes, we have questioned the wisdom of staying with the same local vet. The anemia issue plus some other things with her and Chase Bird have led us to the decision that we’re probably going to be finding another vet.

Right now, Abbey is going through a hard time because of Chase Bird. She’s eating and running around, but she’s also lying around more and is quieter, less playful. She also looks for Chase Bird. That breaks my heart.

But Abbey is a plucky little soul. We look forward to many years of her companionship.

See you Monday!

Losing our boy

Chase Bird, Christmas 2014

I can’t tell you about the last six months without first telling you about Chase Bird. We lost our boy on Tuesday, October 27.

You know that my cats are my family. Larry feels the same way. So the last two weeks have not been easy.

Chase Bird’s death was unexpected. He was referred to a different vet to do dental surgery for stomatitis. During the exam before the surgery, the vet found a mass in his abdomen. We gave permission for her to do exploratory surgery.

He had numerous tumors, including one a little smaller than a golf ball. They could not be removed. Even without doing a biopsy, the three vets there thought it was lymphosarcoma, or lymphoma. The prognosis was very poor, and he was certain to be in pain.

Their recommendation: let Chase Bird go while he was on the table, so he would feel no pain and no fear. We let him go.

My friend Carolyn made this for me.

I want you to know about Chase Bird. He came into our lives in 2007 when he started hanging around our house. Apparently, he had been hanging around the neighborhood for a while.

He was so thin, we started feeding him. One morning, he jumped into my car as I got in to go to work. I remember his little face looking up at me, eyes so bright and eager. He chose us.

On October 20, 2007, we brought him into our house. We named him Chase Bird. He became family.

He was a gentle cat who would snuggle on our laps. He had the longest legs and jumped with such grace. When he purred, he also “puffed” his cheeks and made a clicking sound. That was his “I’m content” sound.

He could catch a toy mousie in the air. His paws could bend and pick things up—you’d swear he had thumbs. He would carry certain toys—only certain ones—in his mouth and looked so cute.

My friend Christi made this.

I am writing this on Tuesday night. We picked up his ashes tonight and brought him home. This ritual is heart wrenching and comforting, a strange mixture of emotions. It’s another reminder he’s gone. But his remains are home.

I have to believe that I will see my boy again. I still talk to him. I believe his spirit lives on.

And I think I heard him tonight.

The crematory service puts the name of the pet and the name of the pet parents on the bottom of the wooden box that holds the ashes and on a certificate stating that the ashes are his.

Chase Bird’s humans were listed not as “Larry and Tina Barbour.” They were listed as “Larry and Tiny Barbour.” Larry and I laughed and cried, probably a bit hysterically, when we saw that. And I’m sure I heard Chase Bird laughing too.