...and have otherwise been given a bit of a bad rap over, Making me MAD as a hatter (like Alfred E Newman, whose permanent demise, as of today evidently, is pretty much 'well-nigh')? No, not at all...and neither a hyperventilatin' hypochondriac!

Indeed, after much (emotional and verbal) 'pressure' - juxtaposed over against my own simple refusal and utter unwillingness to just 'shut up and be silent', and 'accept' I'm some sort of '*raving nutter'...

...my insistence finally, ultimately 'paid off'...in a flurry of diagnostic (I believe's the word) tests and exams (over a period of weeks and months back in 2009)...

...and 'hey, presto', guess what, folks?

Yep, I did indeed have coeliac's disease...and 'osteomalacia' [osteopenia], a species of osteoporosis as a matter of fact...something only supposed to afflict 'lil ole ladies' and the like...

Yet over the interval - and all these years (a full decade even) since - has that changed in any appreciable way, shape or form, the attitude of ye ole medical establishment towards Yours Truly?

*No - again, you guessed correctly - not on yer nelly!

*As gleaned from a perusal of extensive notetaking by one particular health centre I frequented over recent years...who evidently regarded me as about as ravin' a nutter as they'd ever encountered.
*I was once even dubbed "Rave-id" by a sometime friend...