Stepheny Berry, MD, FACS

I do not understand all the doctor-hating that seems to fill so much space online. I say that as a physician, yes. And also as someone who has now been on the other side of the bedrail. Of course, there are bad doctors. No profession is exempt from that. But the worst examples often consume all the attention, and in doing so, they can obscure something deeply true: great doctors bring hope, healing, and restoration into people’s lives every single day. I know that differently now. When I was the patient, lying on the ground with a shattered kneecap, staring at imaging that showed my patella in pieces, watching my knee fill with blood, feeling pain that seemed impossible to control, and fearing I might never walk normally again, I was not thinking about abstractions. I was thinking about disability. About loss. About whether life and physical ability, as I knew them, had just changed forever. Then I met the surgeon who reconstructed my knee. I will never forget Archie Heddings. He showed me the images and explained exactly what he would do. Piece by piece, he walked me through how he would reconstruct what had been broken. Screws. Tape. Sutures. Precision. Skill. Calm. He was quietly confident, never overstated. At one point I just bluntly asked, “Doc, can you fix this?” He looked at me, nodded calmly, and said, “Andrew, this is what I do. I fix broken, smashed stuff every day, all day. I will do my job, and you do your job with PT. You will walk, run, ski, and hike again.” That moment brought tears to my eyes. It also brought hope back into my soul. He booked the OR for the next day. Now, just 14 weeks after surgery, I am back seeing patients. During my last week rounding in the hospital, I climbed 160 flights of stairs. I can flex my knee to 130 degrees. I am not all the way back yet, but I am back in motion, back in purpose, and back in my life as a father and giving back to my patients and the world around me as best as I can. My surgeon is not God. But I will say this without hesitation: through his hands, his judgment, his training, and his care, he changed the trajectory of my life. So, when I hear sweeping contempt for doctors, I think now about moments like this. And it is much more personal. Sometimes the people who speak most dismissively about physicians have simply never had their moment yet, the moment when they are scared, hurting, vulnerable, and utterly dependent on someone with the training and courage to do what almost no one else can do. When that moment comes, they may understand. Doctors can do far more than treat disease or repair injury. Sometimes, they give people their lives back. Tell your doctor you appreciate him or her. A simple genuine thank you will really make a difference.