Troll

You should see the spam I got on my last post....someone felt it was germane to share a link to a doctor profile featuring naked patients. I gather the guy is a plastic surgeon.

Why anyone thinks it helps their career to get a back link on my blog escapes me. The SEO of  plastic surgery? Not a concept I am familiar with.

For that reason, comments will continue to require moderation forever and ever, amen.

Also, trolls have been a problem. For a while, folks with IPs associated with various .edu or medical organizations felt the need to tell me I was depressed. At length.

Sigh.

I just...there really is no hope for patients like me. If you want to find a way out of bad health, you have to find it. Medicine's default setting is to throw anti-depressants at you while scornfully rolling their eyes at your temerity to have a different perspective.

Of course, I never had a real life physician tell me I needed anti-depressants, just the pretend ones on the internet. So I either got really lucky or the folks who troll patient blogs aren't such hot shots. I don't know. Probably both are true given that most patients with difficult-to-diagnose conditions usually do end up on anti-depressants at some point.

Then, recently, I stumbled across an online conversation of various medical blog personalities and they were colluding to troll patient blogs. That was scary to read. My stomach sank when I saw it.

So keep your comment moderation on and set fingers to delete. And if you're frustrated or angry...you're not necessarily depressed, you're just a patient at the mercy of merciless medicine. The trolls will make sure you don't forget it either.