Best Psychiatrist in Khulna - Book Appointment
I Wash My Hands Until the Skin Cracks, Then I Wash Them Again
I am thirty-six, married, and I keep house for my husband, two children, and my mother-in-law here in Khulna. The washing began about two years ago, in the week our youngest had a bad fever and kept vomiting. I cleaned everything twice that week and scrubbed my hands raw. Something in me changed during those days, and it has not changed back since.
Now the taps run all day in my house. I touch a door handle and I am at the basin. I hold the stair railing and I scrub again, with soap, sometimes with detergent, because my hands still feel dirty to me. The skin on my fingers has split and it stings. My mother-in-law counts my trips to the tap. Worse, my little daughter has started copying my washing.
Our family doctor dressed the cracks and asked why washing had taken such a hold of me. I had no answer that made sense. He said a doctor who works with troubles of the mind may understand this better, and that I should sit with one and talk. I did not know where such a doctor could be found, so my husband searched on his phone one evening. We opened the list of doctors practising in Khulna on DoctorBD24 and went through the names together.
5 available specialists found
Dr. Zillur Kamal
Prof. Dr. Md. Sultan -E- Monzur
Dr. Shammy Akhter
Dr. Mohammad Hasan
I Wash My Hands Until the Skin Cracks, Then I Wash Them Again
The first sitting was mostly my story
He did not reach for a pen at once. I began with that fever week, and he let me talk to the end of it. How many times a day do you wash now, he asked. Twenty, I said. Some days more.
Questions I had not expected
He asked how I sleep, and whether anything like this had touched me when I was younger. He asked about my family's health and my own, and about the reports from the year my blood pressure rose. If the body is feeding this, he said, that side needs its own doctor first.
He would not promise a quick change
A fear and a habit grown over two years do not loosen in a week, he said. We would meet at gaps he set and judge by small changes. A medicine might quiet the push in my head, and it would come with rules.
The rule that came with my medicine
He wrote one medicine and was firm about its running. I take it at the hour and in the amount he fixed, on easy days and hard days alike. Calm days are no reason to drop it myself, and stopping suddenly can leave me worse. Trouble from it goes to him first, and he settles any change.
A different trouble under our roof
My mother-in-law has a swelling her doctor says needs an operation. Looking around this site for her, I found a separate list entirely. It was the page of general surgeons working in Khulna, and I noted two names for her doctor to see.
Will he think my trouble is too small?
I asked him that myself, half ashamed. He said a trouble that runs your whole day and splits your skin is not small. Every size of trouble is heard in that room.
Why did he ask about my sleep and health?
The mind does not live apart from the body, he said. Bad nights can strengthen the push to wash. A body trouble can also sit underneath everything, quietly feeding it.
Can my husband sit in with me?
Yes, if I want him there. He joined part of my second visit and described the washing from outside. What I say alone stays between the doctor and me.
How long before the washing loosens?
He would not give me a date, and I am glad he did not pretend. We count small things first. A handle touched without dread. A morning with fewer trips to the tap.
The medicine makes me drowsy. Should I stop it?
No. Drowsiness is a thing to report, not to act on alone, he had told me. I phoned his chamber, and he changed the timing of my dose himself.
If dark thoughts of harming myself ever take hold, what should I do that day?
He was plain about this before I left. Such thoughts are not to be carried alone or hidden in shame. Tell someone in the house at once and go to a hospital that same day. Go the same day too if sleep leaves you for nights together, or if eating and washing suddenly become more than you can manage.
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