All of the Blogsplot.net blogs have been up and down more than a Yo-Yo in the last week or so.

I’ve been in touch with Acenet.net, which is where we have our domain hosted. It appears that they discovered that someone on the same physical server as Blogsplot.net was abusing it somehow. They told me that they thought that removing the abusive account from the server would clear the problem up.

… I hope so! It’s a HUGE pain in the (_|_) to move to a different server. ;o)

While we’re at it … if any of you have tried to be in touch with Dr. Engel and not received a reply – he’s OK, but his internet connection isn’t. He’s been offline for nearly two weeks now, and is one very frustrated gentleman. I believe he’s going to try to connect through a different company. I don’t envy him. That’s a royal pain in the aforementioned area too.

But anyway – we’re back. Hopefully. *crosses fingers* Maybe someday I’ll be rich and famous, and I’ll be able to have my own server … but until that happens, shared hosting is where it’s at. Hey! At least it’s not Blo … oops … I almost said that out loud! *cough*

A few days ago, Ripple of Hope sent me an email. She included some links to posts that she wanted me to take a look at over at the “Angry Professor’s” Blog. The two posts related to a student who has Asperger Syndrome, and while I was rather put off by the professor’s tone, what really caught my attention was one of the comments on the second post:

I’m sorry, but you might consider not sending a person like this to college at all. Nothing wrong with his intelligence, but his strengths might lie in the path of a skilled trade. Those jobs can’t be outsourced, and may be a source of more concrete (pun intended) satisfaction in the long haul.

As I read that comment, I felt my mercurial blood pressure rising to dangerous levels. I actually had to fold my lap top, get up, and walk away for a few minutes. That’s not something that happens to me very often.

In her email, Ripple of Hope had this to say: “I thought this was pretty ignorant, but rather than start some stupid argument in the comment section, I thought I might change my post on Aspergers to something more educational regarding what Aspies really look like and how they are as different from one another as any other individual. Perhaps we could take a shot at this together? Let me know what you think . . . “

Her request was a bit of an “Oh oh!” moment for me. Although I’ve dealt with difficult subjects before, Asperger Syndrome is just not something I write about in my public blog. My husband and both of my youngest sons have Asperger Syndrome, and it’s had a profound effect on all of us.

However, as difficult as it is for me to write about AS from my own perspective, I knew that it would be wrong to not stand up and correct the record.

OASIS describes Asperger Syndrome in the following way:

Asperger Syndrome or (Asperger’s Disorder) is a neurobiological disorder named for a Viennese physician, Hans Asperger, who in 1944 published a paper which described a pattern of behaviors in several young boys who had normal intelligence and language development, but who also exhibited autistic-like behaviors and marked deficiencies in social and communication skills. In spite of the publication of his paper in the 1940’s, it wasn’t until 1994 that Asperger Syndrome was added to the DSM IV and only in the past few years has AS been recognized by professionals and parents.

Individuals with AS can exhibit a variety of characteristics and the disorder can range from mild to severe. Persons with AS show marked deficiencies in social skills, have difficulties with transitions or changes and prefer sameness. They often have obsessive routines and may be preoccupied with a particular subject of interest. They have a great deal of difficulty reading nonverbal cues (body language) and very often the individual with AS has difficulty determining proper body space. Often overly sensitive to sounds, tastes, smells, and sights, the person with AS may prefer soft clothing, certain foods, and be bothered by sounds or lights no one else seems to hear or see. It’s important to remember that the person with AS perceives the world very differently. Therefore, many behaviors that seem odd or unusual are due to those neurological differences and not the result of intentional rudeness or bad behavior, and most certainly not the result of “improper parenting”.

By definition, those with AS have a normal IQ and many individuals (although not all), exhibit exceptional skill or talent in a specific area. Because of their high degree of functionality and their naiveté, those with AS are often viewed as eccentric or odd and can easily become victims of teasing and bullying. While language development seems, on the surface, normal, individuals with AS often have deficits in pragmatics and prosody. Vocabularies may be extraordinarily rich and some children sound like “little professors.” However, persons with AS can be extremely literal and have difficulty using language in a social context.

My three “Aspies” fit that description in more or less classic ways. First of all, the three of them are exceptionally intelligent individuals. My husband graduated at the top of his company of 300 when he was in the service, and I have yet to find a subject, obscure or otherwise, that he’s not knowledgeable about. His oldest natural son is a computer wizard, artist, chef, who graduated summa cum laude from college. Although computer science isn’t what he learned in college, he’s teaching me more about the Linux Command Line and computer components than my CIS course is. Our youngest son, also an artist, (he was recently tapped by the Discovery Channel for the use of his terraforming graphics for a mars documentary) scored in the 97^th percentile for the Social Sciences, and 95^th percentile for the Biological Sciences for the entire US when he took his HS graduation test. He’s now a molecular biologist, working for an international company. These men are all three college material.

As far as behavior, the two oldest children from my first marriage were a real handful. They were difficult students, sometimes disruptive, often in hot water, making all of the wrong associations, and paying far too little attention to the scholastic aspect of school … they were the reason I took them all out of school, and homeschooled them. I was trying to do a “course correction,” because they were definitely heading down the wrong path. The younger two, both AS, were quiet and studious – and still are. There were never the “party animals” that their half siblings were. My “course correction” didn’t do much for my rebellious older children, but it polished my younger two into real gentlemen. Both of them joined the Knights of Columbus as soon as they were old enough, and the oldest one serves as an acting deacon at church.

People who have Asperger Syndrome are regular people. They get married, they hold jobs, they have likes and dislikes … and they are individuals. You will find some who are patient, and some who aren’t … some who like attention, and some who don’t … some who are good students, and some who aren’t … some who are disruptive, and others who are quiet and studious. You’ve probably met hundreds of them, and not been aware that they had AS – and I’m including those of you who are in medicine in that statement. I believe that the high level functioning autistic spectrum disorders are drastically under-diagnosed here in the states.

To take one disruptive individual who is unfortunate enough to have AS, and hold him up as an example of the Syndrome itself is not only unkind, it’s absurd – and misleading.

It’s not right to categorize people – not by race, sex, age, religion – or illness. Let individuals categorize themselves by their behavior – and be smart enough to learn from the experience of dealing with them, but put the blame where it belongs: on an individual person’s behavior.

Yes, there are conditions that intrinsically cause behavior problems – BPD, for example. But even then – you almost can’t blame the individual, considering that they’re sick, and most likely are not in full control of their behavior.

The “Angry Professor” redeems herself a bit in the second post when she says:

I no longer view Hans as a huge pain in my ass. I can see a big, goofy sweetheart in there. I am happy now; I feel like a real shit when I dislike a student.

I’m glad she’s happy, and no longer sees the student as a pain in the derrière … the unfortunate thing is that the tone of the first post provided the conditions for ignorant and unkind comments like the one I quoted above.

There’s a trite saying which holds a great deal of truth, well worth recalling, when preparing to make disparaging comments about people with illnesses or conditions they did not choose …

On Wednesday night, after exchanging emails with a few other bloggers, I began writing this post. I had quite a bit written – about a hypothetical situation centered around a non-existent wanna-be mommy-blogger. It expressed my point quite well, but after reading the latest blog post of a dear blogger friend, I decided that I really needed to take a different approach to such a serious subject.

In the last year, the Medical Blogosphere has seen some ups and downs. We’ve lost a few people, gained a lot of people, had bloggers taking more or less friendly pot shots at each other over a variety of issues, been beset by hordes of trolling malpractice lawyers, and taken down the garden path by mere teeny-boppers. We’ve had our blogs plagiarized for financial gain … and discovered that spam wasn’t only meant for inboxes and Hawaiian musubi …

It’s been quite a year. Through it all, we’ve gotten to know one another better, and I think that we’ve become quite a nice little community. We’ve come through a lot … and we’ve pulled together, supporting each other through the bad times. Sometimes though … I think we forget what’s really important …

Over the last week, I heard from two blogger friends; each of the two presented me with opposite sides of the same issue, and both had valid points. What made the situation so intense for me is that I really care for both of them, and just wanted to see things turn out in such a way that no one would be damaged, traumatized … or alienated.

As of this moment, it looks like all three may have happened … and perhaps to both of my friends.

There’s so much that I’d like to say about the subject that I honestly don’t know where to begin …

The basic issue appears to be: physicians – and other medical personnel – engender a level of trust which is above and beyond the norm. In a general way, there’s no doubt about the veracity behind that statement. Many of us have been known to admit things to physicians (or nurses, or ER techs … etc. … ) that we would never consider saying to even our closest friends and family members.

I need to point out that they’re not the only ones, though … priests, rabbis and ministers receive a similar quality of “trust” as a group. If we do a bit more thinking, I’m sure we could add even more groups to the “trusted” category.

That trust, some people feel, deserves some sort of reciprocity, and I agree. When I visit a physician, I want to be certain that he’s the real thing. I want to be able to examine his credentials before he takes it upon himself to stuff me full of drugs, or cut me open to fish around for whatever’s gumming up the works.

I might even be excused for wanting to know how well he did in medschool … and how many other patients with my particular medical problem he’s treated, and how well they made out under his care …

To stretch that even further – I feel that I can also question his character – just as I can the character of anyone I meet, under any circumstances.

However …

I have no business asking him what he had for breakast, his wife’s name, where he was born, what color his toilet seat is, and if he has a gay cousin. It’s none of my business if he has any kids … or if he has a dog, or likes to fish and hunt. That’s part of his private life …

When we see physicians, we tap into their knowledge and capabilities to heal our bodies, or help keep us well … the part of them that we are trusting with our lives should be transparent for us … just as we should be transparent for them as patients. However, they are human beings who have lives outside of what they do for a living. They, like the rest of us, have a right to personal privacy.

And there’s another right that they have – freedom of speech. They can write letters, articles, poems, songs … blogs … anything they’d like, just like the rest of us. We have the right to create blogs anonymously … or through a pseudonym … or to let it all hang out … and so do they. They can even write about what they do for a living. Yes, there are regulations they have to follow – HIPAA, for example, but I’m sure that they know quite well that those who cross that line could end up being hurtin’ puppies.

The only time we can demand identification from a physician who has a blog of any flavor whatsoever is if he or she begins to use the blog in an official way – to practice medicine … give out medical advice … or otherwise begin to sell themselves as professionals looking to do business through the blogging media. Then – they’d better drop the “Anonymous” stuff, cause it won’t cut it.

Are we going to demand that everyone who’s gone into a sensitive profession give up their privacy? Are we really going to try to restrict their freedom of speech? Are we going to demand that they always stand naked before us? “Everyone else can write anonymously, but not you!” And once we’ve done that to physicians, who’s next? Priests, rabbis, ministers … ?

If we’re going to do that, we also need to define anonymity, because putting up a photo and a name doesn’t make a blogger any less anonymous than using no name, and no photo at all. I know quite a few docs who don’t blog. There’s one that I hope to hit up soon for a podcast interview for this blog who had to ask a fellow doctor in the room “What’s a blog?” … the other physician didn’t know either. Anyone with an interest in deceiving people could use his name and likeness on a blog – and unless someone who happened to know who he was ran across it, the blogger could get away with it for quite a while, if he was circumspect enough when creating his posts. A name and a face are meaningless until you meet someone nose to nose … and even then, you could still be deceived.

This past summer, the “Naked Tomato” episode taught me a lot of excellent, but difficult, lessons. One of the lessons which I learned is that Anonymous bloggers are not a threat … unless I allow them to be. I can make them become a threat by trusting them more than the online relationship warrants. In that case, they’re not the threat – I am … I become a threat to myself. I’m not saying “don’t trust anyone online” … there are a few of you out there in blogland who know things about me that I don’t speak about with my own family. The issue here isn’t anonymity – we’re all anonymous to a degree in blogs – the core consideration is trust, and how far to take that trust. Sometimes you reach out to someone, and when you bring your hand back, it’s full of wonderful things – friendship, understanding, compassion … but sometimes, you bring your hand back only to realize that you’re shy a few fingers …

And that’s just the way life is – in any venue.

Personally, I’ve always felt that the benefits of reaching out in trust and acceptance outweighed the occasional disappointments. So far, I still have enough fingers left to hold the goodness that I’ve received from the friendships I’ve made online … and they’ve been considerable.

If you take the time to get to know the spirit of a person – that part of them that transcends their writing, their looks, their faith, their nationality, their age, and even their attitudes … you can begin to get a glimpse of the pure person behind the persona. Get to know them, slowly … develop a feeling for what they are … and that will tell you who they are. After a while, you’ll know who you can trust, and who you should just enjoy from a distance. That they have – or don’t have – a “name” won’t make a lot of difference – since what you’ll understand about them will be so much more than merely knowing a person’s moniker.

Now, I’m not quite done. There is one more facet of anonymity that I feel I should explore, because it also relates to the reason I’m writing this post …

Anonymity is nothing by itself. It’s only what we make of it – or do with it. Sometimes though, what we choose to do with it can be really ugly.

There’s a certain class of people who seem to enjoy hiding in the shadows of anonymity while taking low, crude, unkind and unfair pot shots at other people. They seem to crawl out of the woodwork whenever there’s a controversy of some sort … like the one we’re having now in our little corner of the blogosphere. I don’t know if it’s because they figure that they can do as they please, because no one knows who they are … but they should realize that they’re branding themselves as cowardly snipers. In my own mind … I’ve got them classified as belonging to blog-layer that’s just below comment spammers. In meatspace, they’d be the lowlives who leave nasty spray painted graffiti all over the place.

My recommendation is to ignore them. Delete the comments, and don’t think about them again. If you have WordPress – ban their IP. You don’t need them as readers. Let them go dirty up some other part of the blogosphere with their cowardly vitriol.

It’s really hard to take something like that very seriously, anyway.

And now, my wish for our little corner of the blogosphere is for everyone who’s been hurt by this latest storm to heal, move on … and keep blogging. Sometimes, we just forget what’s important …