Dear one, I apologise for my stupidity, but I didn't understand a word.

I was checking the comments that have been made on my earlier posts. 

Disease vs Conditions have elicited an intensely negative return. 

I came across a very disgruntled, almost abusive post of the 'you are an ass' kind.

True to my usual flippant self I'd referred to myself as a 'professional patient'. This person took off on that, and gave some very learned and derisive inputs and dismissed me in one extremely long sentence.

Dear One, I am greatly appreciative of your knowledge, but I understood nothing. I am that shallow.

To me, the word professional describes, and the thesaurus agrees, someone who is skillful at whatever he does. Efficient, competent, qualified, are some of the synonyms that the thesaurus puts forth. As a patient I am all that. The word ‘licensed’ applies too. It applies to me when it comes to the possibility of a trip only a mentally ill person can take.
As a patient I qualify for all of that.

So whatever opinion anyone may have about my being a professional patient, I will persist in my opinion that I am.

As far as the bipolar goes, I know when I need professional medical attention. This is not easy when the faculty need to realise that is compromised.

I am drug compliant. The lack this discipline, any honest doctor will tell you, is the most hand-wringing kind of frustration in their professional lives. For the quite-not-so honest, they see a happy increase in their cash flow.   

There is no virtue in this compliancy ‘though. I am mindful of the repercussions that going AWOL will definitely suck me into and I am terrified of that.
So I walk to my psychiatrist's clinic, make comments that are totally inappropriate, and immediately realise that they are what only a hypomanic can make.

When I am hypomanic, I rave and rant and put off people with unnatural intensity. Often the bridge of a treasured relationship is badly burnt, never to be mended again.
I have nightmares about those spent friendships, but then think that maybe that is the price to pay for an imagined equation that never was mature enough. I still regret the loss because in my mind I still wish that the friendship had braved the ups and downs of the tide – but I know that for people who have never experienced the onslaught of bipolar, only a miracle will mend them.
Then there is the flipside … when even the words of Freddie’s song in My Fair Lady make me sob. Forget about saying them out aloud, even writing the words cause a major tsunami.
Yet through the tears I laugh. The doctor does too. And I walk out with the knowledge that I have enough strength to have a sense of humour, at least for sometime, to make light of the situation and give it a good fight.

FYI the number of hits that blog scored is touching five figures and continues to grow.