Hi guys. I've had the worst news possible. I've had health OCD for more then 15 years and with meds, ERP and a lot of effort I was starting to get by. But yesterday I went to the optalmologist for a regular checking, and all of a sudden she told me I have Glaucoma??. I'm 44. What the fuck!? No job, no family(all dead from cancer) and now the possibility of becoming......I don't even want to think about it. I am going to ask for a 2° opinion but this does not look good. I feel I have not incentives or motivations in life to keep going any more.And I will probably have to quit my meds(ISRS) just in case they have something to do with the Glaucoma. I feel very depress. I apologise for being so negative this time but I do not feel like talking to anyone close to me about it yet. The "what if" is killing me a and this is gonna be a hard one to get over...thank you for reading this and being there.

Sorry to hear this. Definitely get a second opinion (and hope it is different!). From years of experience living with OCD, I think we can agree that OCD sufferers often underestimate their abilities to overcome difficulties and overestimate the probabilities of negative outcome. What-if or premature worrying won't help, deal with the fact (one doctor says so, let's get checked by another doctor / more senior specialist), not what-if.

Did she tell you how bad it is? Treatment options? Glaucoma can't be reversed but it can be slowed down with eye drops, laser surgery and other treatments. It's a slow disease and very rare that you'll go blind (only 5% of people do and those are from non treatment). The whole goal is to control intraocular pressure with special eye drops. My mom has had glaucoma for 15 years and she has it pretty advanced and she still sees very well. She uses special eye drops every day and wears polarized sunglasses. She is at the point that she can't have surgery but even still her doctor told she won't go blind, she'll have some vision loss but it won't be for another 10 years maybe. You're going to be ok. Just start treatment and be consistent with it.

Definitely STAY AWAY FROM THE INTERNET. I know that same feeling of looking things up for health reasons and it makes it worse, not to mention but it's always wrong too. Try your hardest to resist it.

And by the way, Glaucoma may not be as catastrophic as you may think. Millions of people have it and there are operations to cure.

Thank you guys for the support, I really need to work on my resilience with health issues. Now I am working on trying to focus on something different from searching info on the Internet. Internet is now clearly my compulsion so I am trying to resist to it without meds( I tend to think they had something to do with the eye pressure in my case) thank you again guys, I am very down and I needed the support ?

yep i agree with getting a second opinion and that there are definitely ways to deal with glaucoma !!