Doctors said I'd never walk again...

Ever hear someone say that?

It is total Bull Shit.

Think about it.

What medical practitioner, (a professional who is by definition an expert in evidence-based assertions with years of experience in witnessing the defeat of predicition and the futility of certainty) would tell someone, would ever consider making the kind of "horoscopic" statement exemplified by, "You will never walk again."?

No doctor, GP, surgeon, specialist or whatever you want to call them, would ever make that statement, or any statement like that statement.

It is a stupid statement to make, unless your patient is dead or their spine has been destroyed.

People say shit like that because of the effect they want to get from you, and the positive affirmation it says to themselves:  I am special, I am amazing, I am better than you, I am so awesome the universe works one way for others and another way for me.

However, it is "quite possible" that the patient in certain situations would want to know "will I ever walk again?". Who wouldn't want to know that, especially after an accident where you've lost control or sensation of your legs - or you've lost your legs?

It is therefore "quite probable" that such a person would ask their primary medical adviser that very question.

"Hey doc, will I ever walk again?"

Unless the doctor is a psychopath or philosopher, the former ignoring the question, the latter spending too much time answering it, they would probably respond to the question with an attempt to understand its genesis and reply.

So, what would they likely say?

As a practitioner of medical science, an expert in empirically verifiable and evidence-based inductive reasoning, they would have a suite of phrasing options to present to the patient, hopefully using sensitive language that include the following concepts:

1. A summary of how cases like this have panned out in the past for others.

2. Based on what evidence is available, a probability judgment, such as "possibly, unlikely, might, potentially, fair chance."

3. If certain conditions take place in the future, e.g. medical treatment, patient immobility, no further detrimental influences, then the probability of x degree of walking will increase.

A "doctor" would never ever say "you will never walk again", nor even "you will walk again".

They would attempt to respond to this question, understandably deserving of an answer, from a scale of likelihoods and balanced by conditional caveats.

The only reason you will ever have heard someone skite "the doctor said I'd never walk again.", is if and only if the patient was initially unable to walk and later was able to walk. What about the ones that didn't end up walking again? The doctor was correct in their prediction and wrong in yours. Knowing that, you now see how their predictions were flawed to begin with. So, there's nothing to skite over, now that you know the doctor was sometimes right and sometimes wrong with their predicitions.

Anyway, it is "unlikely" that a trained and experienced and sober doctor would make such a statement. Statements X will never Y, are the halmarks of the religious, the moron or the manipulator.

We wouldn't wish any doctor to have any of these characteristics.

If a doctor were found to be prognosing in this way, then we have discovered a rare bird, a very stupid doctor and we should move quickly to have their licence to practise removed...

...until they are likely to be smart again.

A bigger problem with this kind of flagrant bull shit is the anti-intellectual, anti-reasoning climate it draws from and adds to.

The patient's statement is a "So there!" to science and reasoning.

Smart people said something and they were wrong, therefore being smart is bad.

In the US, this kind of statement is likely to be made by a religious nut.

Science said I'd never walk again, then I walked again, therefore God exists.

Impeccable logic.

Doctors said x, y or z, and they were wrong, is a bull shit formulaic statement made by idiots who are also science haters.

They hate science because it is a threat to their little fantasy about living for ever in a heaven where you don't have to shit ever again.

Well, We're very sorry, but because you're dead, you are never going to shit again.