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One thing is immediately apparent about Dr. Scott S. Gordon — he’s one busy guy. He is, after all, an orthopedic surgeon, movie script writer and father of three.

Fortunately for Gordon, he enjoys what he does. When you ask him how he stays sane, he says the answer is simple.

“If you’re busy with the things you like to do — you’re never busy,’’ he said.
“It’s when you’re busy with the things you don’t like that drive you insane.”

Gordon, who works at Orthopedic Associates of Osceola and also recently attended the premiere of his own comedy medical movie, has a true passion for both areas of “medicine.”

Let’s start with the serious medicine.

Gordon’s biomedical engineering master’s thesis at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute involved working with cartilage. In preparing the cartilage for experimentation, he had to drill cow bones.

“In medical school, I dreamed of the day I would be able to drill into bones again,’’ said Gordon, who graduated with honors from New York Medical College in Valhalla. “It was always fun for me to use my hands and there was never a doubt about it — surgery was for me.”

Now, if he could just get the public to better understand what it is he does.
“Some patients think we are toenail doctors,’’ said Gordon, who completed his residency in orthopedic surgery also at New York Medical College. “It really makes me laugh when a patient asks ‘Doc, is it a fracture? Or is it broken?’
After I compose myself, I ask them, ‘What do you want it to be?’ ”

Along with his board certification in orthopedic surgery, Gordon also has a certificate of added qualification in hand surgery, one of the ways his field has changed over the years, he said.

“Sub-specialization has changed orthopedics,’’ he said. “It used to be that most orthopedists would take care of most things in the field of orthopedics but now with sub-specialization, it is not practical anymore. Because of this, ER coverage is more stressful for us and increases our liability risk.”

But Gordon relishes every case. “All my patients are special to me,’’ he said. “I thank them for letting me live a very satisfying and happy life by allowing me to take care of them.”

One, in particular, he remembers well. The young man had a scaphoid movie script writer fracture — a broken bone in the wrist.

“After I placed the screw, I moved the wrist to check for rigid fixation and also checked the range of motion,’’ Gordon said. “I heard a click every time the wrist was flexed. I looked and looked for what was causing the click but I never found it. I closed the wound and went to speak to the patient’s mother to tell her that the bone is fixed but I’m afraid that her son will have a click in his wrist for the rest of his life. She took a deep breath and replied, ‘That’s okay – he always had a click in his wrist.’ ”

Had the humorous Gordon not been an orthopedic surgeon, he says he knows exactly what he would have been: happy.

“Please do not misinterpret this,” he said. “I am very happy as an orthopedic surgeon but had I not been an orthopedic surgeon I still would be happy doing the many things that make me happy. Sort of all the other things I do now except I would get paid for it.”

Such as? Well, that’s where the movie writing comes in.

Gordon and his brother Dr. Doug Gordon, wrote National Lampoon’s “Robo Doc” which addresses medical malpractice issues in a hilarious yet satirically accurate manner, Gordon said.

The movie, which stars Alan Thicke — the famous father from the television show “Growing Pains” — and David Faustino, who played “Bud” Bundy, the son on “Married with Children,” recently premiered at The Hard Rock Live in Orlando.

The Gordon brothers already were a writing team for the past twenty years along with some of their other brothers, Tom and Jason. They wrote and produced song parodies and comedy skits that aired on Alan Combs’s and Rush Limbaugh’s radio shows. They also wrote comedy for “National Lampoon’s Comedy Night School” and for their own radio show, “The Gordon Brothers’ Weekend Revue,” which aired in Orlando every Saturday night for five years.

“ ‘RoboDoc’ was the culmination of all our skills and experience we gathered during our lifetime,” Gordon said.

Gordon also played a small role in the movie — Dr. Von Schmeckel — but said for him the most rewarding part was composing, arranging and producing the musical score for the film.

He’s played piano for years — even worked his way through medical school in a wedding band — but had never composed a single note and had never arranged music for an orchestra. “It was a very large task but I really loved it,’’ he said. In doing so, I fulfilled a life long dream. I always said that if I was able to go around the block again, I’d love to compose the music to the movies.”



July 2008

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