Hysteresis and Reverse Billiards Are Fixing Metaphors

Any frame that focuses on healing as a process of getting back to the starting point is a 'fixing' metaphor. And fixing is an excellent thing for doctors to do! What Weisman and Masharawi point out in their article, however, is that the stuff that goes with the broken leg—cycles of inflammation, changed pain perceptions and altered neurological patterns, to name a few—are really hard to fix. I believe they are inherently almost impossible to 'fix.' Bones can be fixed, complex adaptive systems can't. What you can do, however, is remind it about that 'adaptive' part.