Comments You Don't Get to See

In my last blog piece, I recollected an unscheduled visit I had made to Walter Reed Army Hospital two years before. These are the type of spur-of-the-moment decisions journalists make all the time when they are on the road.

The purpose of my visit had been to see if I could get into the hospital’s psych unit to learn what was being done for returning soldiers with PTSD. Naturally - and appropriately - they did not let me in, Nevertheless, I made use of the visit in a blog I did for HealthCentral to draw awareness to PTSD.

“Time for quiet reflection on our heroes," I concluded in my piece. “Are they aware of what lies ahead for many of them? About the odium and contempt society will hold them in when it happens? These poor souls don’t have a clue.”

While there, I also encountered young men with missing limbs, which I also reported in my original piece.

At the moment, I am recovering from sciatica, which literally had me flat on my back for more than a week, I ventured out to the local diner last week, only to run into a telling reminder how fortunate I am: A woman at an adjacent table was relating to a neighbor about her husband, who had just had half his foot amputated.

That conversation prompted me to recall some of the suffering in my own family. Then those unforgettable images of those young men at Walter Reed seared through my conscious, with a pain far more intense than anything I had felt in my leg. Suddenly, my sciata didn't seem so bad.

Time to count my blessings. Time to come to terms with the natural process of aging. That was the theme of my most recent blog post here.

It seems “Anonymous” entirely missed the point:

“Let me get this straight,” he wrote. “You made an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment visit to Walter Reed Hospital, where you used the suffering of strangers to make yourself feel better?”

Even though I did not explain the purpose of my visit to Walter Reed in my last piece, it’s pretty obvious the reason wasn’t to make me feel better. But having already made up his mind, Anonymous wasn’t going to let a good tirade go to waste: “I bet they loved being an inspiration to you,” he concluded. “Some compassion, and admiration, for your aunt and cousin might have been warranted, rather than your self-serving, sanctimonious blather.”

Irrational attackers like Anonymous are an occupational hazard for all bloggers. They just happen, and when they try to post a comment, I simply hit the “Reject” button. There is no sense reasoning with them, as they are beyond reason. Typically, they have an antipsychiatry agenda, but a good many are just plain freelancers with anger issues. Here’s a doozy from a few months ago:

Keep popping those wonder drugs SAL aka McPimp {Oh, that's right, you don't do meds Mr. McPimp}. Maybe McPimp can get himself into see his other heros as in Biederman, Goodwin, Jamison, Nemeroff and all the other greed mongering bipolar child Pharma huggers!

Though McPimp is a pretty lame con-man; did you write that post yourself Johnny Boy aka Sal? Did you steal this Page from Herb of many faces and IDs play book? {making up people to talk at is an old trick for sociopaths like yourself}. I guess being a fraud isn't enough; now you make people up to have comments on your "LOST" adventure. You do know that plastic blow up dolls are next in your precarious relationship pattern. {laughing}

Let’s see: This version of Anonymous is confusing me with someone named Sal, is nursing a resentment with someone else named Herb and yet another individual who goes by the screen name ID, is entertaining a delusion that I’m not on meds (I’m on a very light dose mood stabilizer and have emergency meds on standby), that I fabricate imaginary characters, and that I’m part of the Pharma conspiracy.

I’m grateful to Phillip Dawdy of Furious Seasons, who acts as Jupiter to my planet earth. Namely, his gravitational field seems to attract all manner of space debris nursing cosmic resentments, some of whom have ideated physical violence against me. It helps when he makes up things about my personal life such as:

“Maybe that's why a little over two years ago, when I was making the Zyprexa documents available to the public and going up against Eli Lilly, McManamy was going on book tours, divorcing his wife who'd supported him while he wrote said book and moving off to the desert of San Diego County to find himself.”

That little piece of fiction drew a whole meteor shower of nutjob comments. Better they scar his planet rather than mine. But, occasionally one or two migrate into my orbit.

That’s what the “Reject” button is for.