I described to him how very worried I am that I'll ever fully recover my musical performance capacity

Speaking seriously [for once], Wordwind, it would have been more helpful if your surgeon had told you how to overcome your "perseverance" rather than simply give it a technical name.

But we can forgive him because he is a surgeon, not a therapist. He thinks his responsibilities stop at the end of a blade. [That's all he's paid for, you see.]

This is lamentable but sadly endemic amongst medical specialists, not just surgeons.

Gentle, persistent, graduated exposure to the traumatic stimuli is the way to overcome "perseverance", both emotional and physical, according to the latest therapeutic thinking.

When I think of Christopher Reeve's real-life action hero achievements in overcoming his own paralysis, caused by a horse-riding accident, so it happens, I think "gentle" is putting the therapeutic prescription too gently.