Empathy from the doctor is always nice, not just adherence to the current dogma that flips back and forth every decade or so.

> The doctor is basing their judgement on current consensus within their field, which hopefully involves careful studies.

Medicine is unfortunately not nearly as scientific as you might wish - I worked for the British Medical Journal a while back and they are all about evidence-based medicine... unfortunately, there is still a lot of medicine that's based off of received knowledge or observational evidence, which may or may not be accurate. The situation is changing though as things get proper studies done, but it's not always easy to get decent results and so current consensus can and does change over time as research gets done.

Since the world stopped being completely black and white. (It never was.) And most definitely, medical science is not either.

With every medical decision there are trade-offs. Sure, it's best to walk soon after surgery... sometimes. Sometimes it's too early. And sometimes there are trade-offs like torturous pain that no person should have to bear. Many people might choose to forgo the day after walk knowing that their chances of a full recovery might be 0.01% lower.

It reminds me of the mantra that "breast feeding is best". Yes, according to some studies, there appears to be positive relationship. But what if continuing to breast feed causes a mother to stay clinically depressed. What if she can't handle the every 2 hours and it is driving her crazy and she wants to shake her crying baby. Maybe in this case, "formula is best".

A good medical practitioner works with their patients to communicate the risks and rewards clearly and help guide them to make the decisions that work best for them.

Having surgery may not be required. But an appropriate knowledge of what’s going on certainly is.