Can heart valve replacement surgery cure OCD?

There.  I said it.  I have O.C.D.

Not the hand washing kind, although I do wash my hands anytime I think I've touched a cootie.

Not the locking the door over and over kind, although sometimes I do lay in bed and wonder if the door is locked.

Not the turning the lights on and off over and over kind, although I do go around the house turning lights off.

Not the counting over and over kind, although I do prefer to buy items in quantities of six.  (This is not always possible.  Six apples is doable, six toasters, not so much.)

The type of O.C.D. that has taken over my life for a good part of my life is called list making.  I am a lover of lists.  Lists are my life.  Lists make me happy, and crossing something off a list brings out the giddy in me.

Most of my lists are kept on my phone.  The include but are not limited to:

• Walmart - get what you need at a discount while enjoying a freak show
• Costco  - my mom has become my personal Costco shopper and I highly recommend everyone have one
• Family Christmas Letter - I keep a list all year long of the boneheaded things we Andersons do so I can remember to share them in our cray cray Christmas letter - get ready, this year it's gonna be a doozy!
• Daisy Book - this is where I keep quotes I want to remember to send to Elder Jake - you can see his Daisy Book quotes here:
  http://elderjakeanderson.blogspot.com/p/daisy-book-quotes.html
• Surgeon - this list includes questions I want to remember to ask, including "Are you sure I need to have that STUPID sleep study?"  
• Pre-Surgery Bucket List - to become it's very own post at some point

When a list becomes out of control, and when I'm feeling a bit out of control, I do this...

This is our bedroom door.  (Looking at this pic I can see that the door needs a paint job.  I'd better add that to the list.)  This is my pre-chest cracking to-do list.  It's not complete, it's a work in progress.  Pretty much every day I add something to it and move these little stickies around like chess pieces.  

I know what you're thinking, this girl is a new kind of crazy.  But you are wrong.  This is what keeps me from going crazy.  If I don't do this, I can't get all of these to-dos out of my brain.  When I type them into my phone or stick them on the door and get busy tackling the list I feel good, oh so good!

I live with someone who has a very different type of O.C.D.  I don't think my wonderful hubby has ever made a list in his life.  And I'm not kidding.  He blows with the wind when it comes to the to-do part of life.  We are different in that regard.  I'm not saying one of us is right and one is wrong, but my way is most certainly superior.

This is the type of O.C.D. Dave displays on a daily basis:

This morning's dishes after Dave washed, rinsed and stacked them

He is obsessively neat.  Neat is his middle name.  Not organized, that's a different animal.  Neat is its own issue.  And being the wife of a neat freak I must say, it's not the worst thing ever.  This morning he did the dishes, which he does quite often.  He's a good boy.  

When Dave does the dishes it involves the following process:

• Prepare dish water to the exact temperature that will disinfect and sanitize
• Check all soap levels, including the soap bottle and the scrubber with soap in the handle
• Adjust soap levels if not to specifications
• Double check water to insure temperature is correct
• Dispense exact amount of soap into appropriate amount of water
• Rinse each dish to the point of total cleanliness before it enters the dish water
• Place perfectly rinsed dishes in dish water
• Scrub each dish until your arms ache
• Scrub each dish one more time for good measure
• Rinse each dish, individually, until there isn't even the memory of a soap bubble
• Rinse one more time because the bottle says rinse and repeat
• Stack the dishes on the mat as if they were little soldiers marching off to war
• Double check for any stray bubbles that may have made it through the rinse process
• Clean out the already clean sink with a product containing bleach
• Repeat after each meal or snack

When I do the dishes I give them a quick (very quick) rinse and toss them into the dishwasher.  Then I say a little prayer that all the gunk comes off in the wash and go about my day.  Like I said, we are different in this way.  

And just because I haven't quite shared TMI about Dave's OCD, you should also know that when hanging up clothes, the system in his closet is as follows:

• Blue shirts go on blue hangers
• White shirts go on white hangers
• Red shirts go on red hangers
• Pink shirts...haha, he doesn't wear pink...he thinks pink and purple and yellow are girlie colors

Do you see the level of the issues going on in the Anderson household?  So back to my original question, is there any chance, any chance at all, that heart valve replacement surgery can cure O.C.D.  Maybe not, but let's just pray the surgeon is as meticulous with my valves as Dave is with his dishes. 

From my heart to yours,

Dave and I share this obsession...BIG TIME!!!