The Firefighter With O.C.D. and the Vaccine He Believed Would Kill Him
April 18, 2025 at 01:09AMIn the interest of not making this about me, I’ll just say that I empathize with anyone who struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder, let alone anyone whose life has been completely upended by it the way Timmy Reen’s has. Joseph Goldstein’s feature is no less affecting for its reportorial remove, chronicling how the disease shaped Reen long before the advent of COVID brought things to a breaking point. You’ll be thinking about this story, and particularly its ending, long after you finish reading it.
Mr. Reen’s first O.C.D. crisis in the Fire Department came early: a memorial service at Madison Square Garden to honor firefighters who died in the Sept. 11 attacks. He and the rest of his company rode the train together from Brooklyn. “I had to board the subway in my Class A uniform,” he recalled. The uniform — the fancy one with the peaked cap and the metal F.D.N.Y. insignia — was now contaminated, and he stuffed it all into a bag when he got home. A few years later, unable to clean it to his satisfaction, he simply threw it out. That was the last time he rode the subway.
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from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/04/17/firefighter-ocd-vaccine/
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