Who "Owns" Your Recovery?

When I think about doctors I am often reminded of that scene from the movie Malice, where actor Alec Baldwin goes into a tirade when asked if he has a "God Complex".  His rather lengthy response goes:

...The question is, "Do I have a God complex?" Which makes me wonder if this...lawyer, has any idea as to the kind of grades one must receive in college, to be accepted to a top medical school? Or if you have the vaguest clue about how talented someone must be to lead a surgical team? I have an M.D. from Harvard. I am board certified in cardiothorasic medicine and trauma surgery. I have been awarded citations from seven different medical boards in New England and I am never, ever sick at sea. So I ask you; when someone goes into that chapel and they fall on their knees and they pray to God that their wife doesn't miscarry or that their daughter doesn't bleed to death or that their mother doesn't suffer acute neural trauma from postoperative shock, who do you think they're praying to? Now you go ahead and read your bible-Dennis --and you go to your church and with any luck you might even win the annual raffle. But if you're looking for God, he was in operating room number two, on November 17, and he doesn't like being second guessed. You want to know if I have a God complex? Let me tell you something--I AM GOD...

While quite theatrical, this monologue gives us some food for thought.  Can doctors save our lives?  Yes.  Can doctors fix us?  Yes, mostly.  But can doctors heal us to to a point of 100% recovery?  Most definitively, No. 

The reasons I say that is because when it comes to matters of broken bones, hip replacements, knee replacements, ACL surgeries, and a battery of other injuries, doctors (and physical therapists, I might add) only get you part of the way there.  A doctor will get you maybe 50% of the way and then the PT might get you to 65%, maybe 70%, if you have a really good one.  But to get to 100%, that task falls upon ourselves.  And such is the reason that so many folks fail to fully recover, because they figure when the doctor or PT says you have recovered, that recovery is over.

To that I say doctors and PTs are only part of the picture.  They are only a piece of the pie.  The rest of it is yours to manage.  In fact, I think you should be managing the whole thing.  Don't like your doctor?  Get a new one.  Not getting results with your PT?  Get a new one or try something different like Pilates.

Doctors only have God Complexes because patients give them God Complexes.  In the end, we need to use doctors for what they are good at: surgeries, diagnosis, and serving an opinion to to the overall process.  They are simply ONE opinion.  But because there are so many factors like diet, exercise, and soft tissue repair, that simply aren't their expertise, we shouldn't allow them to manage our recovery.  Recovery is out of their wheelhouse.  They are the concrete guys of the process, they pour the foundation - which is very important, where all else is built upon.  But they aren't the general contractor - you are!

So the next time the doctor walks in the room and acts like he is charge, (kindly) remind him that he just a resource for your recovery and his worthwhile is based on the value of his advice, not for his ability to pretend he is God.