On Lance Armstrong's Nuts & Bolts

I noted with interest today the CNN stories on Lance Armstrong's "medical miracle": his bolted-together broken shoulder blade. It's great that doctors are able to put in the screws, bars, and nuts to reassemble the great cyclist's shoulder. But it brings me back to a point that's often on my mind: doctors seem to favor fixing the "healthy" rather than performing the hard work of improving the lives of people with disabilities.

When I suffered the compound fracture of my right leg in 2004, the surgeon chose to fundamentally let my leg heal "as-is." "Your bones are too fragile to put screws in," he announced, which shouldn't be a big deal because "you aren't going to run or ski anyway." So, now I have a short leg, Toulouse Lautrec-style, with a knotted up shin bone that looks like I'm carrying around a baseball inside my leg, when you look at the X-ray films.

My 53 years as a patient in the medical world, makes me believe that the profession, like any other, prefers the easy cases. A cab driver would rather collect a hefty fare for driving an old lady around the block, than picking up three black guys in the hood. A TV repairman would rather order a replacement from the factory than rip the case off an old-fashioned tube TV. Doctors would rather treat a single malfunction in an otherwise healthy patient, than trouble themselves with the difficult choices a disability presents. It's totally understandable, of course--we're all human and we all prefer to walk downhill than to climb a ladder.

So--go, Lance! Win one for the team! But hey, doc--don't forget about the hard cases, too!