Diana, I have no doubt you remember it more accurately than I do. I do know I didn't like the "surgery wars" when they first showed up on the VSG forum and I joined in defending "our" place from those attacking DSers.
later, after being a regular on the (original REAL) R&R I learned the more variety in who we talk to the better. and I won't melt into a puddle of goo if people disagree with me, or get mad at me. and, no, we CAN'T all get along because we will never all agree where the line is or even if there should be a line.
for the record, I went to a perfectly lovely wedding with people I met on R&R but I know the bride had originally planned to invite "everybody" and after that first one she changed her mind.
Sue, I think a lot of times by the time "proof" comes out that something was a lie, people have long since stopped listening. you might as well be quacking like a duck; they have already decided.
I can tell you Kim was a lovely hostess to me twice now and I hope this blows over - but whatever. I am now posting on OH for various reasons none of which she needs to be suspicious of but I suppose she is.
that place changes a person, and not for the better!
Jackie, I know some people misunderstood me - and that some of it was my "fault" because of the deliberate tack that I took to garner attention to the benefits of the DS. I knew people were getting upset by my posts, because they took them personally, but I didn't change my tack, because having people upset at me was of less concern to me than spreading information about the DS.
But - it did surprise and disappoint me how many people believed the lies, even after I rebutted them, over and over. The infectiveness of the vituperative behavior and the insistence of some on believing the unbelievable bad things said about me, when nothing I ever did before that upset them (speaking the truth they didn't want to hear about the benefits of the DS over the other surgeries) was remotely related to what I was accused of by those two bitter whackjobs, was - perhaps naively - astonishing and irritating to me.
As a lawyer, of course, I was pissed about being falsely and unfairly called a tax cheat (the IRS audited us, garnished my wages during the 2 years it took them to match up pieces of paper THEY lost, and then paid us all our money back plus interest). As a biotech patent attorney looking for a job in the Bay area after my company was sold, I was REALLY not happy to hear in Marilyn's own words that she was posting on various message boards that, among other things, she was spreading lies to her "boyfriend" (for a short while) who was a mover and shaker in this area in my
exact field - and seeing her claim that he said that nobody would hire me (I was somewhat well known in my field, but not nearly as well-known as him, and we had met, briefly). But it offended me personally that I would be accused of heartlessly making her homeless, when she was a deadbeat tenant for nearly a year, while making about $90K/year, who was given 8 weeks notice to get her deadbeat ass out of our house, and that people would repeat that lie over and over and over again, despite my flat-out statements to the contrary which - if I was lying - could have been actionable.
What happened after that was a combination of "Pacific Heights" and "Gas Light." It was not fun - even though it was educational (I learned a whole bunch of law that I was not really interested in!), at times entertaining (maybe someday I'll post the [public record] 29 page load of nonsense she FILED as her rebuttal to the motion for sanctions for committing litigation abuses such as forgery and perjury, and which the judge told us to file - the vast majority of which "rebuttal" had NOTHING to do with rebutting the motion, but went on for pages about how my shit stunk up her hair ALL the way back in the detached pool house, and my house had cat vomit everywhere drying on the furniture, and describing herself as a military mother when the judge had just lost his son in Afghanistan), and garnered me some really dear friends who helped me in many important ways - which they didn't have to do.
So, I won in SO many ways.
I'm not going to regain!! 
