cgrove_00

Hi everyone,
I'm 22 and am thankful to have stumbled upon this site while looking for things about my recent diagnosis of diverticular disease, and gallbladder problems (I was hospitalized for it last month). Anyway, since I was little I can remember having OCD, my GP said that it was mild, but when I was younger it used to be pretty bad. I've taken many different meds for this too, Celexa, Wellbutrin, Effexor for panic attacks and OCD. The Effexor worked but the prescription was so expensive and I was tired of taking meds all the time. So, here's my tic...numbers and illness. They drive me nuts. I have a thing where when I'm reading my book I have to add the page numbers and chapter numbers together, and if they add up to a "bad" number such as 6 or 13, then I have to continue reading until I get to a "good" number like 7 or 12. Recently my new one has been "if I can form the number 8 out of the number then it's bad" Think of it like this...the number 3 can easily be turned into an 8, so it's bad? I know, it sounds nuts but it's very strange and if I don't add things or count things (I even count how many time I dry my hands) then I feel like something bad will happen...then since I've been sick and hospitalized with health problems (diverticulitis and gallbladder problems) I feel like I did "something" wrong and this is why I'm sick...ugh. Not only this though, now if I watch some kind of hospital show, I worry about other things being wrong with me. Like since I've been on the pill for 5 years I'm now worried about that causing my recent problems since I read somewhere that gallbladder disease can be caused by oral contraceptives. I watched a show last night about a woman dying of a blood clot that killed part of her colon because she was on the pill. And blood clots in the lungs... Now I'm freaked out about that too...and stuff like, if I have a pain in my right side I automatically worry about appendicitis and look up symptoms online. It's so bothersome, and now I'm afraid to go back to work because that's where I started getting an attack of diverticulitis. Sometimes I can control it though, I fight back and it works for a time, then comes back. Anyone have any ways of telling yourself convincingly that "nothing will happen"...hehe. Well, that's me. Any help would be great. Thanks a bunch!!

C