50

Chapter 50

Index

Book

Chapter 50: Suspected Nasal NK/T Cell Lymphoma

"Please, go ahead," replied Zheng Ren.

In order to ease future consultations with the doctor, the patient's family members would normally try to promote a friendly relationship first by inviting him over for a meal.

However, the richest man in Sea City should not worry about such an issue at all. Zheng Ren had a vague feeling that it was going to be another troublesome case.

"Thank you for your trouble, Doctor Zheng." Bu Li clapped her hands and a female assistant entered the room with a stack of radiographic films in her hand.

"These are my brother's films," explained Bu Li.

Zheng Ren noticed some hidden annoyance in Bu Li's eyebrows when she mentioned her brother.

"I'm sorry, Doctor Zheng. He is my half-brother," explained Bu Li as she keenly perceived the thought on Zheng Ren's mind and added, "He has been suffering nasal ulceration for half a year and there hasn't been any improvement despite various treatment plans."

'Hey, he should go to the otorhinolaryngology department. I'm just a general surgeon,' Zheng Ren complained silently and continued listening to her story.

"The first-class experts in this country suspected he had nasal NK/T cell lymphoma, but the results after three pathological tissue biopsies showed that it was just simple inflammation. My father was worried and distressed about this issue. Then, he was found to have pancreatic cancer," said Bu Li.

Zheng Ren had already detected countless grudges and resentments within Sea City's richest family from Bu Li's story, but these were none of his concern.

This sort of gossip was life-threatening and Zheng Ren would like to stay as far away as possible from them.

He picked up the thick stack of films, trying to read them facing a light source. The assistant beside Bu Li then came back with a brand new radiographic film viewer.

'Damn, that's really professional. No wonder this is the richest family in Sea City,' Zheng Ren complimented internally.

"I need to see the patient myself."

"He is a little irritable, so you may not be able to examine him," said Bu Li.

Visit our comic site Webnovel.live

"Just one look will be fine. I've a rough idea about his condition already," replied Zheng Ren.

'How am I supposed to know if the patient has nasal NK/T cell lymphoma if I don't see the patient? You guys are asking a general surgeon to diagnose his condition when a specialist with decades of experience couldn't even figure out his problem. Is this an example of a drowning man clutching at straws?'

At least they had been fortunate enough to encounter Zheng Ren, who possessed the power of the System.

Zheng Ren's words surprised both Elder San and Bu Li. They stared at each other briefly before Elder San left the room in silence.

The room instantly became quiet as the chefs had already packed up their utensils when the assistant had come in earlier.

Zheng Ren pretended to be serious but was in fact absent-mindedly looking at and comparing each of the films. He had devoted his life to the medical field for more than ten years, including his time spent studying medicine, and even if he did not clearly understand the films, he at least knew how to act professionally.

A loud voice could be heard in the corridor twenty minutes later. It was unclear, so Zheng Ren had no clue what the commotion was about.

Soon, the door opened.

Elder San entered the room while holding a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy with one hand,

"I'm sorry, Doctor Zheng. This boy has developed fear of hospitals and doctors after frequent consultations," explained Elder San.

Zheng Ren was shocked at the sight of Elder San holding a constantly struggling boy with one arm behind his back and admired silently, 'No wonder those people respect Elder San so much. Look at that arm strength. He probably has a handgrip strength of a hundred kilograms.'

The boy's condition and final diagnosis were shown in the upper right corner of Zheng Ren's vision when he fixed his gaze on the boy.

Well, that was awkward.

Wealthy families were indeed chaotic.

"Elder San, you're too polite. Let the child go. It's better not to let him create a mess here," said Zheng Ren.

Behind Elder San stood a man whose expression sank immediately. "Miss, are you humiliating the young master?"

"Huh?" Bu Li hissed through her nose as she looked askew at that man with piercing eyes.

"You seized the young master directly after stating that his presence was required, then you want him to leave after taking one glance. Do you think you're fooling a monkey?" The man refused to give up. "The young master has been in a bad mood after Master Bu fell sick and even had a nosebleed this morning. If you continue humiliating the young master any further and cause his condition to deteriorate, I will definitely report this issue to Master Bu."

"Up to you." Bu Li waved her hand casually.

The man gritted his teeth, unable to do anything about her attitude. Left with no choice, he stared at Zheng Ren and asked, "You're a professor? Which hospital are you from?"

The contempt in his tone was obvious when he emphasized the word "professor".

Zheng Ren was less than thirty years old. He could not possibly be a professor.

"You flatter me." Zheng Ren was not bothered as he had developed an immunity to this sort of mocking tone after encountering various incidents in the hospital.

"You asked for the young master's presence. What have you understood so far?" asked the man fiercely.

"Have a care how you speak!" Bu Li scolded. "He is the surgeon who performed the surgery on my father!"

"Professor Ichiro Moriyu performed the surgery on Master Bu! Miss, if you don't explain yourself today, the young master and I will visit Master Bu to demand an explanation! You don't have any authority yet in the Bu family!"

Zheng Ren was experiencing a headache. A war within a wealthy family. That was boring.

"Are you sure you want to hear it?" Zheng Ren tilted his head and stared at the man with a smile on his face.

"Is there a problem?"

"Come in and close the door if you've made up your mind."

The astonished Elder San and Bu Li stared at Zheng Ren in silence.

"His condition is special. Are there any unrelated parties here?" asked Zheng Ren.

"Just spit it out!" answered the man impatiently.

"Good." Zheng Ren then pointed at the nearest MRI film on the radiographic film viewer. "There are indeed signs of nasal NK/T cell lymphoma in the films, so the diagnosis isn't wrong.

"But judging by his medical history, this diagnosis is invalid."

"Don't talk nonsense!" The man was getting impatient.

"I think the patient is using recreational drugs," said Zheng Ren.

It was a simple statement, but its effect was that of a small stone thrown into a pond, sending ripples in ever-widening circles.

The startled Elder San gave this some thought.

Bu Li gave Zheng Ren a puzzled look. How did he come to the diagnosis with a quick glance at the patient and reading the MRI films for twenty minutes?

Even senior professors in Imperial Capital and Sorcery Capital were unable to diagnose the patient with certainty. What was the source of his confidence?

"Bullsh*t!" yelled the man in exasperation. Then, he glared at Bu Li and complained, "I'll definitely report to Master Bu what happened today."

"Up to you," replied Bu Li coldly before asking, "Doctor Zheng, there aren't any needle marks on his body."

"It's mixed with glass particles. During inhalation, those particles rupture the nasal capillaries and facilitate the entrance of recreational drugs into the bloodstream. Hence, the high is further intensified."

The child in Elder San's grip stopped struggling immediately and gave Zheng Ren a horrified stare as if he had seen a ghost.

The child was very good at covering his tracks. He had not expected someone to see through his tricks so easily.

"Go to the hospital and take a blood sample for a toxicology screen. If he had a nosebleed this morning, that means the chemicals in his bloodstream haven't completely metabolized yet and can still be detected in the blood test," Zheng Ren concluded.

Zheng Ren's confidence and the terrified look on the child's face made the trio believe the explanation instantly.

That must be the truth, but who could have guessed it?

Elder San put the child down and assumed a fist-and-palm salute. "I misjudged you, Doctor Zheng. Still waters run deep."

Zheng Ren failed to grasp the hidden meaning in Elder San's words. He did not care who Elder San supported—Bu Li or the young boy—because the rivalry over a wealthy man's inheritance would definitely end up in turmoil.

After noticing that the boy had been released, the man wanted to step forward and help him, perplexed. However, his legs had been drained of energy after realizing the truth and he staggered after taking one step, almost falling to the ground.

"Doctor Zheng, you must be tired. I'll instruct someone to send you home," said Elder San lightly. Zheng Ren had no intention of staying any longer, so he agreed to his suggestion and left the room.

In front of the door stood a man dressed completely in black. He was the brute with a baseball bat in the emergency department yesterday, the one whom Elder San addressed as Little Six.

"Send Doctor Zheng home." Elder San made some arrangements. "Also, give Doctor Zheng an explanation for what happened this afternoon."

Then, Elder San assumed a fist and palm salute again to bid farewell.

"Doctor Zheng, this way, please," said Little Six politely.

"I still don't know your name yet. What's your surname?" asked Zheng Ren.

"That's very nice of you, but just call me Little Six. You're the Bu family's savior, and that means you're my savior too, so there's no need to be so polite." The smiling Little Six's tone was as humble as dust. The ferocity with which he held the baseball bat in the emergency department last time had disappeared into thin air.

As they walked out of the main entrance, Zheng Ren frowned upon seeing a traumatized man standing alone outside the door.

IndexChapter 51

Index

Book

Chapter 51: Discharge Against Medical Advice

The golden chain as thick as a finger dazzled against the night sky.

"Doc… Doc… Doctor Zheng, I was wrong." Black Tower had lost his usual savagery and looked incredibly pathetic after waiting for god only knew how long outside the door.

Zheng Ren ignored him and asked Little Six, "Brother Six, is this your car?"

An Audi Q7 was parked in front of the main entrance. Zheng Ren recognized this model, unlike Bu Li's high-class luxury vehicle which was beyond the knowledge of the people at the bottom of the social hierarchy—Zheng Ren included.

"You're too polite, just Little Six will do." Little Six grinned and pointed at Black Tower. "Doctor Zheng, how are you planning to deal with him?"

"Deal with him?" asked Zheng Ren curiously.

Zheng Ren had never experienced this sort of underworld dispute, nor was he interested in finding out about it.

"I was instructed by Elder San to protect you. My brothers went to take a short break after seeing the huge rescue operation this afternoon and the police officers that even arrived on the scene to maintain order, but I didn't expect him to trouble you then!" Little Six was getting exasperated and the scar on his face seemed to become alive as it radiated a bloodthirsty aura.

The arrogant Black Tower merely lowered his head without any inclination to defend himself as if he had transformed into Peppa Pig in Little Six's presence.

"Oh… Have you eaten yet?" asked Zheng Ren.

"Not yet." Little Six was stunned momentarily. After realizing that Zheng Ren made no attempt to look at or even mention Black Tower, he quickly walked past Zheng Ren and opened the door to the passenger seat.

"Thank you." Zheng Ren smiled.

After Zheng Ren entered the car, Little Six walked toward Black Tower and kicked him without saying a word. Black Tower then fell to the ground instantly as if there had been a loss of structural integrity.

"You're lucky Doctor Zheng can't be bothered with you." Little Six placed his foot on Black Tower's cheek and twisted it, grating his face against the rough pavement with a sound that reminded Zheng Ren of a grinding contusion. "Hand in your company's demolition and relocation contract tomorrow, and leave Sea City once and for all."

Then, Little Six turned around and left him.

Visit our comic site Webnovel.live

Plain and simple.

Little Six entered the car, ignited the engine and left the exquisite courtyard under the rich velvet blanket of night.

"Doctor Zheng, I'm a thug, so don't feel too disgusted at some of my actions," said Little Six with a grin. "These guys don't know which way the wind blows. They act foolishly in public and still seek to prevail over others. I'm guessing it won't take more than a few years for them to meet their doom at last."

In the alleyway hung a red slogan—crime prevention is everyone's responsibility!

Zheng Ren smiled and nodded in response.

"Doctor Zheng, where is your home?" asked Little Six.

After giving his address to Little Six, Zheng Ren thought for a while and suggested, "There's a food skewer stall at the intersection. Since you haven't had your dinner yet, why don't we stop there and fill our stomachs first?"

Little Six was slightly surprised. "I thought you had your dinner just now?"

"Escargots, foie gras with fish roe, and the meat was undercooked. I haven't had my fill yet," answered Zheng Ren truthfully.

"Hahaha!" Little Six laughed. "Doctor Zheng, you're a jolly man. I'm not used to Western food as well, and I think roadside stalls are much better than French cuisine."

It was just a simple statement, but their friendship had strengthened further.

Zheng Ren and Little Six finally satiated their hunger after consuming dozens of food skewers. He then exchanged his phone number and WeChat ID with Little Six before going back home to rest up.

Little Zhao was nowhere to be seen when Zheng Ren returned home. After washing up casually, Zheng Ren undressed and lay on the bed for a deep slumber.

His mind dragged him into the oblivion of sleep because he knew everything would be fine.

It was already six o'clock in the morning when Zheng Ren woke up from a dreamless sleep.

A cold shower invigorated him.

He went to a restaurant downstairs to have breakfast before going to the hospital via public transport.

A clamor could be heard from even the main hall when Zheng Ren reached the emergency department. Too many patients had been admitted yesterday and there were hundreds of people—patients' family members included—squeezing into the emergency department that had a total area of less than one thousand square meters. It would be strange indeed if there had been pin-drop silence in the department.

However, the noise itself soothed Zheng Ren's heart.

Only a living man had the right to be rowdy and complain about poor infrastructure.

Patients and family members greeted Zheng Ren as he walked into the emergency department corridor. The fact that these patients, who had 'Avatar'-like appearances yesterday, had lost their blue discoloration today pleased Zheng Ren even more.

He smiled and waved to the patients all the way to the duty room and changed his attire.

The emergency department was operating in an orderly manner. After Zheng Ren accompanied Old Chief Physician Pan for a ward round in the morning, Old Chief Physician Pan then went to the hospital to deal with allocation of medical staff and equipment into the emergency center.

Since their poisoning had been treated and they had recovered physically, a few patients started approaching Zheng Ren to request hospital discharge.

He provided the same explanation every single time. "Liver functions will deteriorate after acute poisoning. During the resuscitation process with methylene blue, there may be exudative inflammation which can irritate the gastrointestinal organs such as intestines, bile ducts, pancreas and so on."

In summary, patients had to remain hospitalized or stay in the emergency department for one week, and hospital discharge was possible only after their conditions had stabilized without any signs of complications.

Since their lives were no longer in peril, they changed their minds from simply receiving treatment to receiving treatment in better conditions.

It was just an inadvertent psychological request, but it troubled Zheng Ren greatly.

Numerous phone calls were made to Zheng Ren, Old Chief Physician Pan, senior consultants of each department, and even the hospital directors inquiring about the patients' conditions and requesting transfers to better sick rooms.

It was extremely difficult to request a deluxe private sick room during this sort of large-scale food poisoning incident.

Thus, after enduring the unbearable noise in the emergency department corridors for two more days, the patients, who assumed their conditions had indeed stabilized, began building up their determination to solve this problem—self-discharge.

No matter how Zheng Ren persuaded them, they always had a thousand reasons to argue with.

Zheng Ren also felt helpless with the limited infrastructure in the hospital. Some elderly men… Almost everyone had inadequate rest, and some people with cardiovascular disease even started experiencing symptoms such as arrhythmia.

Left with no choice, Zheng Ren used a standard template and made a form for discharge against medical advice—self-discharge would be allowed only after signing the document stating that the patient or their family member insisted on a hospital discharge against doctor's orders. The doctor had explained the possible complications clearly and the patient would be held responsible for any potential consequences that may arise from their decision.

The form dispelled some patients and family members' plan of leaving the hospital. It was just one week, anyway. It would be over soon.

However, most people decided to ignore Zheng Ren's advice and signed the documents.

The corridor gradually emptied after some patients left the hospital.

There were no major emergency cases this fine day and Zheng Ren did only two minor wound closures without requesting Xie Yiren's assistance.

It felt good to be able to enjoy some leisure time as Zheng Ren sat in his office and stared blankly at the yellowing leaves through the window.

His lifespan would be cut short if today had been as busy as yesterday and the day before.

Every patient who had suffered nitrite poisoning had gotten out of danger due to timely resuscitation, with the silver lining being that no large-scale deaths had occurred.

Zheng Ren overheard from the nurses' gossip that a chef in the largest braised meat chain store in the city had mistaken nitrite salt for edible salt, which had caused the mass poisoning.

Why would a braised meat restaurant have nitrite salt? Zheng Ren speculated that it had been used as a preservative to make stale meat look more desirable.

Was the boss arrested? How severe was the punishment? These were none of his concerns.

His mind was focused solely on the fact that he had to perform emergency hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery. Since the intensive training time in the System had been inadequate, he had no choice but to perform an old-fashioned open cholecystectomy instead.

He was more proficient in open cholecystectomy since he had not practiced laparoscopic cholecystectomy yet.

Zheng Ren had his own plan in this issue. In order to prevent any potential accident happening during surgery, he needed to familiarize himself with local anatomical structures, which he could not do by simply dissecting cadavers in medical institutions.

Now that he had a good knowledge of the local anatomy of the gallbladder area, he just needed an opportunity to purchase intensive training time for laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

More than twenty days of intensive training were simply not enough.

Nowadays, most people chose to perform the laparoscopic over the open option in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery, and that included simple cases of pancreatic cancer and gallbladder cancer too.

Zheng Ren disagreed with this method because it was difficult to remove tumor tissue through a tiny scope. Moreover, if the surrounding tissue was contaminated with tumor cells, the patient may face an increased risk of metastasis.

However, hepatobiliary and pancreatic malignancies were rarely seen in the emergency department, so mastering emergency cholecystectomy was his only concern at the moment.

Zheng Ren had an urge to pour all 930 skill points and 75000 experience points from his inventory into the hepatobiliary and pancreatic skill tree.

Perhaps he would have done that a long time ago had the System not threatened him with elimination.

The threat of elimination was like the Sword of Damocles hanging above Zheng Ren's head, forcing him to be prepared all the time to face some unpredictable danger.

During his free time, Zheng Ren would revise hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery again and again so that he could familiarize himself with local anatomical structures and its surgical procedures.

IndexChapter 52

Index

Book

Chapter 52: The Initial Construction of The Emergency Operating Theater

Reading could increase skill points as well, but the increment was very minimal.

After one whole day of revision, Zheng Ren's skill points in the general surgery skill tree had increased from 1690 to 1690.12…

Zheng Ren had no idea that the System's skill points could go up to two decimal places.

'When can the System assign a mission to me?' Zheng Ren prayed eagerly.

Only the System's mission could compel Zheng Ren to consume more than twenty hours of surgical intensive training in a targeted manner.

The day passed by uneventfully.

Normally, chief residents had to stay in the hospital all the time for at least half a year, but the same rules did not apply to Zheng Ren. After all, the emergency department could not perform major emergency surgery due to a lack of medical staff and wards.

The doctors on duty would call Zheng Ren regardless if they could not handle difficult cases.

Thus, Zheng Ren went home after work, continued his revision, washed up and slept.

The following days were dull and boring, and the System had become quiet with no new missions assigned to Zheng Ren, which made him curious and slightly anxious with anticipation.

Meanwhile, Old Chief Physician Pan would visit hospital management every day but with unsatisfactory results.

After five days of hard work, only a dozen nurses had been assigned to the emergency department. As for the doctors… Unfortunately, there was a shortage of doctors in every department.

In the end, the hospital management could not bear Old Chief Physician Pan's well-timed visits every day and made him a promise—any doctor who agreed with the transfer would be assigned to the emergency department.

Old Chief Physician Pan fought the urge to curse. Why would he waste time and effort to ask for favors if the emergency department was so likable?

Well, he had no choice anyway.

Visit our comic site Webnovel.live

After discussing this issue with Zheng Ren, he decided to take things slowly and strike while the iron was hot by storming appendicitis and cholecystitis cases.

Zheng Ren guaranteed that he could finish the surgery alone as long as nurses with basic skill levels were assigned to him, and with the secondment of two anesthesiologists, the emergency operating theater started to take shape.

Old Chief Physician Pan took credit for these achievements. None of them would have happened if the organizer had been someone else.

Five days later, Old Chief Physician Pan officially announced the establishment of the emergency operating theater and emergency wards, and that was when Zheng Ren finally received a mission from the System.

[General Mission: The Initial Construction of The Emergency Operating Theater.

[Task: Complete five cholecystectomies in the emergency department.

[Reward: 50 skill points and 1000 experience points. The higher the surgery completion rate, the greater the reward.

[Time: One week.]

The System spoke to Zheng Ren at last, which filled him with joy like rain after a long drought. It was simply too inefficient to increase his skill points by reading medical literature alone.

After one week of revision and various wound debridements and closures, Zheng Ren's general surgery skill tree had increased from 1690 to 1692 points.

It would take thirty-three years for him to reach the Master rank at this rate.

That was precisely the time required for an ordinary doctor to reach higher positions.

However, Zheng Ren was an exception. He had the System, and he was proud of it.

A social gathering was inevitable in a newly established department because it was important for everyone to develop a sense of belonging in a foreign place.

Everyone was able to participate in the gathering as there were no patients at the moment. It would be impossible for the whole department to have a meal together once it was up and running.

Old Chief Physician Pan felt satisfied and complacent during the celebration as the emergency department had finally taken a crucial step toward the development of the emergency center under his impetus.

Regarding staff allocation… Medical staff was like water in a sponge. He could always get some by squeezing it a little harder.

The patients in the emergency department observation unit had known the department was going to receive an upgrade to the emergency center. Thus, they made silk banners in advance to show their sincere appreciation while joining the fun at the same time.

Sea City General Hospital emergency center would surely hold on to these silk banners well. In the future… Ahem… In case they were visited again, they could boast to doctors and nurses unfamiliar with them that they had given the silk banners because blah, blah, blah…

Even though there were no grand opening flower stands or red ribbon cutting ceremony, Old Chief Physician Pan was very satisfied upon receiving the patients' heartfelt gratitude.

…

Cui Heming, a postgraduate student, had gone to Imperial Capital after his graduation from Project 211[1] to set up a business and established an internet company with a decent income of a few million yuan per year.

After his company had entered a successful transitional period, something annoying happened.

His mother had been suffering from tinnitus and dizziness recently. The attacks were frequent and she dared not be involved in any activity due to an increase in severity of symptoms afterward.

He was forced to put his work aside and return to Sea City so that he could bring his mother to the hospital for consultation.

The company's repeated phone calls requesting instructions, as well as the fact that there had been no definitive diagnosis for his mother's condition after visiting Sea City, Imperial Capital and Sorcery Capital, upset Cui Heming greatly.

He even encountered a strange diagnosis in Sea City General Hospital when a doctor in the emergency department asked his mother to get a tooth extraction. Could a tooth extraction cure tinnitus and dizziness? Cui Heming denied that claim with pure logic and probability granted by his high education.

It also made him realize that the medical standard of Sea City was very poor.

Even so, he had heeded the doctor's advice for some inexplicable reason and brought his mother to Peking University Third Hospital in Imperial Capital for consultation.

He could not get a definitive diagnosis in the general outpatient department, and further consultation had to be made in the specialist outpatient department.

He then searched the internet and found a few well-reputed senior professors at Peking University Third Hospital. Everything had been simple thus far.

However, he was stumped by the process in the specialist outpatient department.

He went to queue very early in the morning but failed to acquire an appointment registration number for the department.

There were hundreds of people trying to make an appointment in the specialist outpatient department for medical advice. When Cui Heming stared at the crowd and overheard someone complaining about not being able to get an appointment registration number even after a month, anxiety gnawed at him further.

He made up his mind and purchased the registration number from a ticket scalper.

The normal registration fee for the specialist outpatient department was 100 Yuan, but the ticket scalper sold it at an inflated price of 5000 Yuan.

That was a little heart-wrenching, but Cui Heming endured it anyway.

His mother's recovery was of utmost importance so that he could devote all his energy to his career. He could not possibly purchase that with a mere 5000 Yuan.

His consultation session was at three o'clock in the afternoon, so Cui Heming brought his mother to Peking University Third Hospital ninety minutes earlier.

He was thoughtful enough to place a small blanket on the hard plastic bench for his mother and sat like a statue so that his mother could lean on his shoulder. Her dizziness and tinnitus would aggravate after physical activity and this issue had troubled him for a very long time.

It was his turn at last. Cui Heming cheered up and pushed his mother in the wheelchair into the consultation room.

The specialist was an elderly professor with white hair that provided patients with a sense of security. Cui Heming made a simple comparison between him and the young goofball in Sea City General Hospital and ridiculed that brat numerous times in his mind.

After obtaining a detailed history and going through the imaging films Cui Heming had brought, the elderly professor asked Cui Heming to bring his mother for a few tests that he ordered.

'Tests again! Bloody tests!!' Cui Heming was losing his mind.

Even so, he put up with it and patiently brought his mother to undergo the tests. When he returned with the imaging films two hours later, the elderly professor was already preparing to leave work.

After hanging the CT films on the radiographic film viewer, the elderly professor put on a pair of spectacles with a presbyopic lens and studied them carefully for ten minutes.

"Has she had a dental implant in the last two years?" asked the elderly professor slowly.

"Yes," answered Cui Heming.

"That's weird." The elderly professor pushed up his spectacles and pointed at an image of a denture. "Nowadays dentures are made of acrylic resin, but this is made of amalgam, which is very rare."

"Huh?" Cui Heming was caught in a trance and a detestable figure appeared in his mind.

"Call your dentist and ask about the material used in her denture," said the elderly professor as he started packing his belongings. It seemed like he was ready to get off work.

Cui Heming picked up his phone quickly. He was familiar with the dentist since he had been performing dental check-ups for his mother for more than ten years.

"The dentist in Sea City said that it was indeed made of amalgam." Cui Heming put his phone away and admired the elderly professor even more. How knowledgeable was he to be able to figure out the material used just by looking at the imaging films?

"Nonsense!" The elderly professor was annoyed. "Here… Here…"

The elderly professor tapped his finger twice on the film. "There are two types of dentures. The first type is inlaid with gold which was very common a decade ago. Another type uses acrylic resin which is more popular nowadays. Two different metals will form a primary cell in the oral cavity and amplify bioelectricity. How can she not feel dizzy or have ringing in her ears in this condition?"

Cui Heming was slightly confused. He could not understand the elderly professor's explanation but a familiar term stood out in his mind—a primary cell!

[1] A project of National Key Universities and colleges initiated in 1995 by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, with the intent of raising the research standards of high-level universities and cultivating strategies for socio-economic development.

IndexChapter 53

Index

Book

Chapter 53: Unworthy Purchase of 5000 Yuan Registration Ticket

"Primary… Primary cell," Cui Heming stuttered.

"Yes." The elderly professor forcefully took down the film and turned off the radiographic film viewer. "She'll be fine after a tooth extraction."

"…" Ten thousand alpacas broke into a furious gallop in Cui Heming's heart.

The same diagnosis as the young doctor in Sea City General Hospital?!

"Are… Are you sure?" asked the absent-minded Cui Heming subconsciously.

"Of course I'm sure." Despite being questioned, the professor was not angered. "This disease is explained in dental textbooks. The amalgam denture is particularly strong and durable, and basically doesn't need to be replaced in during one's lifetime. They were also quite popular a decade ago as they were cheap, but have obvious disadvantages; the replacement crown requires a square-shaped space and mediocre dentists won't be able pull it off."

During his explanation, the elderly professor had opened his locker and changed his clothes.

"The dentist who made your mother's denture was kind, but also failed to notice that his patient has a golden tooth." He then added, "This condition has become rare in the past ten years since we essentially use only acrylic resin to make dentures now."

It was true, then! However, it still felt ridiculous in Cui Heming's opinion.

All his hard work and effort for days had been in vain? The diagnosis made after paying 5000 yuan to a scalper was the same as the diagnosis of a doctor from the emergency department in Sea City General Hospital?

Was this not nonsensical?

"Yes?" asked the elderly professor, who assumed that Cui Heming did not believe his explanation as the man was merely standing still, lost in thought.

"No… Nothing…" Cui Heming could deride a doctor in Sea City General Hospital as being lousy, but he simply lacked the courage to do so in Imperial Capital.

"A doctor from the emergency department in Sea City said the same thing too. He also asked my mother to get a tooth extraction," he blurted out the truth inattentively.

"Yo? The emergency department? The medical standard of the Sea City emergency department is very good." The professor smiled. "Let's go. I'm leaving work now. Come here directly tomorrow. I'm not going to consult any further and will just perform a tooth extraction on your mother instead."

Visit our comic site Webnovel.live

Cui Heming did not dare ask why the professor could not perform it now and had to delay it until tomorrow. He imagined it was because everyone had gotten off work and no nurses could assist the procedure, not to mention the lack of equipment.

However, since the diagnosis was clear, it could be easily resolved.

The next day, the symptoms Cui Heming's mother previously experienced disappeared after the tooth extraction.

On the third day, she was energetic and could even start applying light makeup.

Cui Heming's mother, born of a respectable family, no longer looked sick and was resplendent and elegant after beautifying herself.

Cui Heming was exhilarated after his mother's full recovery and booked a flight ticket back to Sea City.

His feelings about the doctor in Sea City General Hospital were indescribable. After hesitating for a long time, he finally made a silk banner and prepared to present it to the uncredited doctor after his mother's constant insistence.

The whole trip between the cities took nearly a week. Since Cui Heming was eager to return to Imperial Capital, he paid the extra cost to obtain a silk banner as soon as he got off the plane and went to Sea City General Hospital with his mother.

They saw a bustling scene upon arrival at the Sea City General Hospital emergency building.

A lot of people were just watching the festivities while holding silk banners outside the building.

This was awkward. Was he supposed to throw the silk banner into the doctor's office without greeting him and shooting the breeze?

"Brother, what happened? Why are there so many people sending silk banners?" Cui Heming lit up a cigarette and approached a random onlooker to ask about the situation.

"The emergency department in Sea City General Hospital has been upgraded to an emergency center. This is the grand opening ceremony." The man accepted Cui Heming's cigarette happily and took a deep drag. "Yo, this is a real Chunghwa[1]."

Of course. He was the boss of a small company with an annual income of a few million yuan. It would be disgraceful if he smoked fake Chunghwas.

"What's the matter with this huge crowd and their silk banners?"

"Huh? You don't know?" The man turned and stared at him as if he was looking at a monster.

Cui Heming was stunned as well. How would he know? However, he had become a smooth talker after working in business for years, so he immediately put on a smile and explained, "I brought my mother to Imperial Capital to consult a doctor, so I've no idea what happened recently."

"Let me tell you, Chief Zheng from Sea City General Hospital is amazing!" After realizing Cui Heming was out of the loop, the man started excitedly telling the story of the nitrite poisoning, the major rescue operation that followed, and especially the fate of the braised meat restaurant owner.

That braised meat restaurant was a first-class old shop in Sea City and had more than twenty branches, which was why it became the hottest issue in just one night.

Cui Heming was flabbergasted.

"You didn't see it, but there weren't enough ambulances and the city even mobilized private ambulances to handle the emergency situation that day. Dozens of sirens wailed like a baby in distress. It's the kind of noise that makes you sick."

"No one died?" Cui Heming found it difficult to accept this ending.

It was not that he hoped for deaths to have happened, but some things were inevitable especially when medical resources were limited in such a large-scale rescue mission.

"Tut-tut, I initially thought lots of people were going to die too." The man blew smoke into the air happily. Cui Heming fought down his murderous urges at being left dangling.

"You weren't there, but every patient had the blue skin color of the aliens from 'Avatar' when they were sent here. Oh, have you read any martial arts novels? Imagine that they had been poisoned with a deadly toxin from the Western Regions."

"…" Cui Heming failed to make the connection.

"Chief Zheng… There, look at that doctor next to that elderly chief physician. He's young but his skills are amazing. He diagnosed the condition on the spot, allocated the special antidote from all over the city immediately and saved everyone."

Cui Heming followed the man's finger and saw the doctor standing beside the tall and strong Old Chief Physician Pan. He was indeed the doctor who informed Cui Heming that night that his mother would recover after getting a tooth extraction.

"Brother, I haven't asked. What are you doing here with a silk banner?"

"I'm here to thank Doctor Zheng." Cui Heming was ashamed of his harsh words then. "Doctor Zheng gave me a diagnosis and treatment plan but I refused to believe him, so I brought my mother to Imperial Capital and bought an expensive registration number from a ticket scalper for 5000 yuan. In the end, the diagnosis was the same as the one given by Doctor Zheng…"

"Hiss…" The man beside Cui Heming gasped in astonishment. He had not anticipated that Chief Zheng's diagnostic ability and medical skills had reached the level of senior professors in Imperial Capital.

After finishing the cigarette, Cui Heming approached a trash can and threw the butt into its ashtray. Then, he mentally prepared himself to present his silk banner and apologize for his behaviour from that night.

A man needed to be responsible for his own mistakes and stand firm even if he had to receive physical punishment.

Just as he worked out a long list of compliments and was about to walk forward, a car stopped in front of Sea City General Hospital emergency building.

"Chief Zheng, my father has a stomachache. Can you take a look at him?" yelled a middle-aged man anxiously as he got down from the driver's seat.

"…" Shoot! His psychological preparation had gone to waste.

Cui Heming froze on the spot and saw over twenty medical staff, who had been posing for the camera in front of the medical department, scatter immediately. A stretcher trolley was pushed out approximately ten seconds later and an elderly man was transferred onto it.

When he looked again, Chief Zheng Ren had already gone.

[1] Chunghwa is a premium brand of Chinese cigarettes produced by the Shanghai Tobacco Group, a subsidiary of China Tobacco. Due to its popularity in the Chinese market, it is considered the most representative brand of Chinese cigarettes and is known as the "national smoke".

IndexChapter 54

Index

Book

Chapter 54: Intensive Training Again In The System

The patient's diagnosis was displayed in the upper right corner of Zheng Ren's vision—chronic cholecystitis.

Zheng Ren's heart sank immediately as this was clearly a complication of acute food poisoning.

The risk of complications would be minimized if the patient underwent an intravenous infusion of antibiotics for one week, but antibiotic misuse by idiotic doctors had become a trend in the country these days.

There were indeed idiots among doctors. For example, there was the usage of triple-drug therapy—including quinolone, which was metabolized by the kidney—as postoperative prophylactic antibiotics in an underaged patient with an uncomplicated appendicitis case.

The vast majority of doctors had good intentions, and they placed disease treatment and saving patients' lives as their top priorities.

However, their intentions were usually and ruthlessly destroyed in reality.

Veterinarians in charge of the medical industry had issued regulations to restrict the clinical usage of antibiotics. Their prescription was justified only when the patient exhibited signs of pyrexia, positive bacterial culture, derangement in routine blood investigations and so on.

However, only a few people knew that meat and milk actually contained a large amount of antibiotics from animal husbandry. Even producers had no choice. How could they meet the increasing demands of the market if they stopped using antibiotics and production fell?

Would they force everyone to be a vegetarian? Zheng Ren would be the first to disagree as he was very fond of eating meat skewers.

This was a troublesome issue and there was nothing Zheng Ren could do about it.

It was good enough if he could manage the emergency department in Sea City General Hospital.

"Do an emergency bedside B-scan ultrasonography. I'm guessing that he has cholecystitis." Zheng Ren quickly made a diagnosis.

"Chief Zheng, how did he get cholecystitis when he was previously well?" asked the patient's son in distress.

"I told you, an acute toxic liver injury will result in exudation and the exudate has a chance of accumulating around the gallbladder. Physical function declines with age, and constant stimulation for one week can lead to cholecystitis," Zheng Ren explained.

However, this type of cholecystitis was uncommon. In fact, its risk was less than 10 percent.

Visit our comic site Webnovel.live

Luck was the predominant factor in this issue. Obviously, it had not been on this patient's side.

It was inappropriate to discuss bad luck with the patient and his family members. Zheng Ren was indeed insensible, but that was limited only to women. He was still emotionally mature and was a smooth talker around patients.

This elderly man had the honor of becoming the first patient of the emergency ward.

His B-scan ultrasound showed that his gallbladder was 95x47mm in size, with marked asymmetry in its wall and striated thickening at 3mm. The gallbladder wall had normal echogenicity with echogenic debris noted within the gallbladder itself.

The ultrasound report concluded that he was indeed suffering from late-onset chronic cholecystitis. Other tests—routine blood investigations, coagulation profile, Hepatitis B serology test, HIV and syphilis tests, renal and liver function tests and so on—were then performed in the emergency department.

Electrocardiogram findings were normal with his sinus rhythm noted.

Zheng Ren instructed a nurse to insert a nasogastric tube for gastric decompression before inviting the patient's son to his office for preoperative counseling.

The son was dejected as he was the one who insisted on a hospital discharge due to the noisy environment disturbing his father's rest.

He did not expect his father to have cholecystitis just as Zheng Ren predicted.

Zheng Ren had had a good relationship with the family members of the patients who had been receiving treatment in the emergency department observation unit, so he chose to comfort the patient's son first after they had sat down in his office.

After that, he began explaining the patient's condition based on his ultrasonography.

This was not a simple case of acute cholecystitis, and its cause had been explained previously. Acute food poisoning would cause transient derangement in liver function, which would result in exudation. The exudate would accumulate in the gallbladder fossa and infiltrate the gallbladder, finally causing acute cholecystitis.

The possibility of young men getting cholecystitis was very minimal. After all, they were in better physical shape and had stronger immune systems, so their bodies would be able to deal with inflammatory responses easily.

Older men were different and could not handle inflammation well, hence the cholecystitis. If conservative treatment with antibiotics was used, it would not have much effect.

After listening to the explanation, the family member stated that he would follow Zheng Ren's arrangements.

It was a sign of trust in the doctor after a period of acquaintance.

If the major rescue operation for nitrite poisoning had been unsuccessful, he would not have so unhesitatingly agreed to Zheng Ren's suggestions.

"Let's do cholecystectomy then." Zheng Ren decided for a surgery in the end.

The old man was prepared for surgery straight away as he was in intense pain and had fasted long enough due to having a decreased appetite after experiencing discomfort in the morning.

The test results came back half an hour later and the patient had no contraindications for surgery. After counseling the patient and acquiring signatures on the preoperative informed consent documents, Zheng Ren brought the patient to the operating theater on the third floor of the emergency building.

According to the initial design plan for the emergency building, the first floor had the emergency department, observation units, B-scan ultrasonography room, CT scanner and various auxiliary departments. The emergency wards were located on the second floor with fifty-two sickbeds, and the third floor with a few thousand square meters was designated for operating theaters. This full-flow design was among the top in China.

Various surgery departments had set their sights on the high-class operating theater, which was the main reason Old Chief Physician Pan had been so eager to develop emergency surgery. If the emergency department had no use for it, someone else would take over instead of letting it go to waste.

Deep inside the operating theater on the third floor lay an interventional radiology suite, which was dedicated specifically for interventional radiology.

The suite had been constructed based on a new design—a hybrid operating room.

A hybrid operating room was an advanced procedural space that combined the traditional operating theater with interventional radiology.

This was advanced technology as ordinary Class Three Grade A Hospitals did not have hybrid operating rooms.

However, the hybrid operating room in Sea City General Hospital had been idle for a long time. The hospital management would be held responsible for wasting resources recklessly if no one tried to seize the opportunity to assume control of it.

The operating theater was fully equipped with disinfection facilities and the still air was maintained at a constant temperature to control airborne infection. Anyone who took a deep breath in this room would get the feeling that the air could purify one's soul.

Zheng Ren went to the male locker room to change into surgical attire while the other doctors assisted with the patient transfer.

He was convinced that, instead of conspiring against him, the System had actually predicted that he would perform cholecystectomy in the future. Well, what was he waiting for? It was time to spend all his skill and experience points in the System for intensive training in laparoscopic cholecystectomy!

In the male locker room's smoking area, Zheng Ren lit up a cheap Ziyun [1]and took a deep drag comfortably before diving into the System.

As he entered, he decided not to spend his skill points, which were but a drop in the ocean. There was no way he could achieve the Master rank and receive a skill upgrade anyway.

He opened the Shop interface, clicked on cholecystectomy and exchanged his entire stock of 75000 experience points from the last mission reward for 20.83 hours of intensive training. Then, as the operating theater formed around him, training had officially begun.

It saved time performing surgery in the System as the mannequins were anesthetized in advance.

In reality, a cholecystectomy required at least two hours from start to finish, but in the System's operating theater, Zheng Ren could simply focus on mastering his skills without having to wait for the anesthesia to take effect or consider the patient's condition and postoperative recovery.

The first laparoscopic cholecystectomy took Zheng Ren nearly an hour to complete. After all, he had not been qualified to perform a cholecystectomy even when he was still in the first general surgery department even though it was just a tier-one surgery.

Subsequent surgeries became much smoother after he had familiarized himself with it.

The time required for each surgery gradually decreased just like during the intensive training for appendectomies. In a sense, one just needed to practice general surgery repeatedly to master it.

In the end, Zheng Ren required only ten minutes to finish a laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

No matter how Zheng Ren made the best use of his intensive training time, in less than twenty-one hours, he merely did eighty surgeries in total.

Even so, he felt particularly good as those practice runs were more than enough to handle this situation.

After his intensive training ended, Zheng Ren turned around and checked his general surgery skill tree, which had increased from 1692 to 1930 skill points. He was unsure if this sharp increment had anything to do with the difficulty of the operation.

Long, gray wisps of smoke still hung in the air when Zheng Ren returned to reality. He then stubbed out the cigarette that he had just taken a puff of, put it back into its pack, changed into surgical attire and went into the operating theater.

Xie Yiren, who had already prepared herself and was standing in front of the instrument table, gave Zheng Ren a warm smile as he entered.

The first cholecystectomy was about to begin.

[1] Yunyan (云烟) is a cheap cigarette brand and the Zi (紫) version has better quality among Yunyan.

IndexChapter 55

Index

Book

Chapter 55: A Live Broadcast of Cholecystectomy

Single room 303 in the special demands ward.

Chief Surgeon Liu Tianxing lay quietly on the bed as Cen Meng sat by him. Neither of them said anything as they were immersed in their own trains of thought.

Random dot-pixel patterns of static flickered on the television on the wall opposite them with its monotonous, dull noise lingering in the room.

Chief Surgeon Liu broke the silence after a while.

"The patient's diagnosis is correct?" asked Chief Surgeon Liu in a croaky voice.

"Yes. Preoperative preparations have been completed and the patient is undergoing general anesthesia now," answered Cen Meng.

"This is a difficult cholecystectomy. First time… Are you sure Zheng Ren is performing laparoscopic cholecystectomy for the first time?" asked Chief Surgeon Liu suddenly.

"I'm sure. He has done a few appendectomies, and he is probably talented in this field as all of them were done well, but I'm sure he has never performed any cholecystectomy—laparoscopic or open surgery—before this!" replied Cen Meng.

"He did assist in cholecystectomy, if I'm not mistaken."

The surgical assistant's main responsibility in laparoscopic cholecystectomy was to hold the laparoscope, a task far more boring than holding a retractor in an open surgery.

It was fine as long as he had not performed it personally.

Chief Surgeon Liu nodded and closed his eyes. "Youngsters have a tendency to act high and mighty after learning one or two surgical techniques. This sort of attitude will do him no good."

"Yes." Cen Meng was aware that Chief Surgeon Liu was going to deliver a speech. As a firm supporter, his job was very simple—answering yes or no would be enough.

"When you're performing surgery, especially an unfamiliar one, accidents are bound to happen without the supervision of a senior surgeon," Chief Surgeon Liu mumbled with his eyes closed as if recalling something from his past and added, "Cholecystectomy is just a tier-one surgery, but do you know why surgeons below chief resident rank are not allowed to perform it?"

"Sometimes there will be morphological changes in the cystic and common hepatic ducts due to inflammatory reactions. The damage will be irreversible once the common hepatic duct is cut." Cen Meng had personally performed more than ten laparoscopic cholecystectomies, so he clearly remembered these precautions.

Visit our comic site Webnovel.live

"Correct, what more with beginners, who can't even differentiate left and right, using a laparoscope for the first time. Chief Physician Pan really has gotten old. How could he let Zheng Ren perform a surgery that he doesn't even know how to do?"

"Accidents will definitely happen with such bold courage."

"We just need to quietly watch the show."

Chief Surgeon Liu opened his eyes as the sound of static from the television suddenly disappeared.

The anesthesiologist seconded to the emergency operating theater today was Cen Meng's classmate, so he would know exactly what Zheng Ren was doing through his "double agent".

A camera system with video recording and streaming functions had been installed in the laparoscope, but no surgeon wanted to broadcast their surgery live and let others observe their operation.

After persistent requests and some unknown promises, Cen Meng's classmate finally agreed to furtively upload the surgery process to him via Bluetooth.

Cen Meng knew that Zheng Ren had no experience in laparoscopic cholecystectomy. In order to make Chief Surgeon Liu happy, he had connected the footage to the television in the special demands ward so that they could watch Zheng Ren's surgery in real-time.

There was no sound, but the laparoscope had been turned on. Perhaps he was insufflating carbon dioxide into the peritoneal cavity to create a pneumoperitoneum.

The laparoscopic camera soon began to shake. The duo spying on Zheng Ren's surgery from the special demands ward were experts, so they knew that he had made a hole and was prepared to insert the laparoscope into the peritoneal cavity.

Silence reigned in the ward, causing the atmosphere to become tense as they felt more anxious watching the surgery than if they had been performing the surgery themselves.

Zheng Ren's sensational forty-nine appendectomies in one night and endoscopic transrectal appendectomy as his coup de grace, a surgery even Chief Surgeon Liu had never heard of, had anxiety gnawing at Cen Meng.

He must have no clue how to perform this surgery. Moreover, this patient had had exudative inflammation for five days and the adhesions would be very severe, which would make the surgery even more difficult.

…

There was a sudden change in the traffic monitoring of Xinglin Garden.

Hundreds of viewers swarmed into a single live broadcast room, but after learning from his mistakes last time, CEO Peng Jia had adjusted the maximum viewer capacity of this particular account to ten thousand viewers and even made a contingency plan in case of system failure.

[God hasn't performed surgery for days. I really miss his awesome and smooth appendectomies.]

[What surgery is he performing this time? Let me have a look…]

[Laparoscopy! Laparoscopy! I'm so excited because I've just started learning laparoscopic surgery. I'm not sure how good this god is in performing laparoscopy.]

[Would you dare broadcast your surgery live if you're in his position? He must be very skillful!]

Hundreds of viewers came into the chat shouting '666'.

Everyone was still buoyed by the crazy night of appendectomies a few days ago, but how good the surgeon was in performing laparoscopic surgery was an entirely different issue.

The atmosphere in the special demands ward was not as lively as that of the live broadcast room. Even though Chief Surgeon Liu and Cen Meng were convinced that Zheng Ren had never performed or underwent any training for laparoscopic surgery before this, they could not help but feel nervous about this operation.

Soon, the laparoscope entered the peritoneal cavity and the triangle of Calot appeared on the television with severe adhesions .

This sight finally put a satisfied smile on Chief Surgeon Liu's face.

If he had been the one performing this surgery, he would need to brace himself and lyse the adhesions within the triangle of Calot very carefully. Otherwise, any iatrogenic perforation would end up killing the patient.

If the surgeon was a beginner… No, even if Cen Meng was the surgeon, the only solution upon seeing this would be to transfer the case to Chief Surgeon Liu as he simply lacked the courage to perform such a difficult surgery without supervision.

[Wow, this is actually a laparoscopic cholecystectomy!]

[Who said the god doesn't know how to perform laparoscopic surgery? Come out, I promise I won't kill you.]

[It seems like the host surgeon doesn't perform laparoscopic appendectomies because his incision is so small that he just simply doesn't need to use a laparoscope at all.]

The viewers were very excited to watch this surgery in Xinglin Garden. No matter how proficient the surgeon was at appendectomies, it was still a simple appendix resection and a normal resident surgeon's job after all.

There was a saying that only a master chef could cook simple Chinese cabbage with potatoes well.

The same phrase applied to appendectomy as well. Judging by the flawless appendectomies the host surgeon had performed in the live broadcast so far, the viewers had concluded that he was a demon with a high skill level.

Even so, everyone was born with different innate talents and it would be impossible to improve one's abilities any further once a certain standard had been reached.

Appendectomy observation was meaningless as it was impossible to use it as a reference in terms of skill level or… physical strength.

However, laparoscopic cholecystectomies were different.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, domestic hospitals had just started performing laparoscopic surgery and many departments—thoracic surgery, general surgery, and gynecology—had also gradually begun to popularize minimally invasive surgeries.

When the older senior consultants of various departments resigned ten years later, the new generation who had mastered the art of laparoscopy became frontline surgeons and made laparoscopic surgery a common practice in the country.

The advancement of minimally invasive surgery with laparoscopy had been rapid since then.

In 2001, a surgeon from Imperial Capital took eight hours to treat a patient with esophageal carcinoma using a thoracoscope. Now, as long as the tumor was not situated at the higher level of the esophagus, the surgery could be finished within two hours.

Laparoscopic surgery had replaced traditional open surgery as the mainstay of modern medicine.

When the severe adhesions in the triangle of Calot appeared onscreen in Xinglin Garden's live broadcast room, countless comments began flooding the screen.

[The god really likes to perform difficult surgery, huh?]

[The triangle of Calot is in a chaotic mess. I'm guessing that the host surgeon will need around three hours to complete the surgery.]

[How is he going to separate the structures when the gallbladder neck is covered in adhesions?]

The closer they looked, the more anxious they felt. The gallbladder was almost completely covered by a thin membranous layer due to exudative inflammation. Forget the dissection of the anatomical structure, even the gallbladder itself was indistinguishable.

Chief Surgeon Liu and Cen Meng were instantly relieved and put on satisfied smiles upon seeing this.

IndexChapter 56

Index

Book

Chapter 56: Failed Public Humiliation Plan

There were severe adhesions around the gallbladder, wrapped in the omentum and a capsule formed by exudative inflammation, without any clear view of its anatomical structure,

Zheng Ren continued making two incisions—one below the xiphoid process and another two centimeters below the costal margin on the anterior axillary line—without hesitation after observing the condition of the peritoneal cavity through the laparoscopic camera.

Liu Tianxing smiled disdainfully as, in his opinion, Zheng Ren's consecutive movements had a completely different meaning.

Most experienced surgeons would give up on laparoscopic surgery and resort to open cholecystectomy after seeing such severe adhesions.

The operative view in open surgery was more direct, after all.

Watching Zheng Ren's dexterous finger movements and blunt separation techniques with a pair of hemostatic forceps, Liu Tianxing did not doubt that the man could complete an open cholecystectomy.

However… he was just a young man, after all. Adversity was a precious fuel for greatness, but in the medical field, especially in its current harsh environment, any mistake made during a surgery would damage the surgeon's reputation forever.

Liu Tianxing went down memory lane and a figure appeared before him.

It was that of an outstanding student with decent behavior and skill at surgery, but was also slightly arrogant at times.

What happened to him in the end? He was sent to a suburb to raise rabbits.

Young men were impulsive and radical. They simply did not understand that discretion was the better part of valor.

Time was required to understand that public opinion could obscure the actual truth.

During the period of the Republic of China, Liang Qichao was diagnosed with a malignant renal tumor after experiencing hematuria, undergoing nephrectomy afterward. The surgeon was the director of Union Medical College University and a demon from the urology surgery department at the time.

The result? There was a small tumor located on the right kidney and postoperative pathology determined that it was benign. However, his hematuria persisted and the symptoms were not alleviated despite surgical treatment.

The surgeon did not resect the wrong kidney and Liang Qichao agreed. Based on current diagnostic standards, he had probably been suffering rare autoimmune nephropathy, but it was impossible to diagnose this disease at the time due to limited diagnostic abilities and resources.

Visit our comic site Webnovel.live

Liang Qichao acknowledged that result, but his students and friends remained unconvinced.

All of them were literati with great influential power, so new rumors were handed down that the demon from Union Medical College Hospital had resected the wrong kidney during the surgery on Liang Qichao, which had damaged Union Medical College Hospital's reputation since then.

That had happened in the era of the Republic, but what about now? There were actually plenty of irresponsible reports about anal suturing and other random things as well.

Chief Surgeon Liu smiled lightly and picked up his phone.

"Little Wang, it's me, your Brother Liu.

"Yes. There is something I need to tell you. I've a subordinate who disobeyed direct orders from his superior and is currently performing a surgery that he can't possibly do well with his standard yet. He has someone powerful at his back but is actually acting with utter disregard for human life.

"Yes, that's true. I'm very angry as well, but there's nothing I can do about it. I even had a myocardial infarction due to rage and I'm hospitalized for observation right now.

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. This immoral phenomenon mustn't be condoned and justice needs to be served so that the public in Sea City will believe in our medical system again!

"Alright, thank you very much."

After hanging up, Chief Surgeon Liu smiled. "This kind of person should be punished via public humiliation."

Cen Meng was obviously distracted and did not respond. His face sank and appeared slightly pale under the light.

'Little Cen, what kind of attitude is this?' thought the annoyed Chief Surgeon Liu, but he merely expressed his dissatisfaction with just a word. "Huh?"

"Chief… chief, he is separating…" Cen Meng stuttered.

Chief Surgeon Liu had forgotten to watch Zheng Ren's surgery while focusing on the phone call earlier.

This was the kind of surgery that even he had found particularly difficult to deal with, so was it necessary to watch any further?

He raised his head and saw that Zheng Ren was performing blunt dissection of the adhesions around the gallbladder with the dexterous manipulation of both the laparoscopic dissecting forceps and grasping forceps as if they were extensions of his bare hands.

Basically, the gallbladder had been freed while he was on the phone…

This… How could he be so skilled?! Was this not his first time performing laparoscopic cholecystectomy?!

Blood started surging to Chief Surgeon Liu's brain and caused his vision to become blurry, so he quickly shut his eyes and calmed his emotions.

At the same time, comments proclaiming '666' flooded the live broadcast room in Xinglin Garden.

[He is so good with the forceps, it's like he is performing surgery under direct vision.]

[Who said this demon doesn't know how to perform laparoscopic surgery? This operation is by far the best surgery that I've ever seen.]

[Those movements are nimble. I wouldn't even dare lyse the adhesions with a scalpel. Is he not afraid of damaging the hepatic duct at all?]

[Young man, your low standard limits your imagination. You can learn a lot from this video.]

In the livestream, the gallbladder, sticky mess around it and all, as well as the anatomical structures of the triangle of Calot had been exposed after merely a few minutes of manipulation with the grasping and dissecting forceps.

Everything had become clear and distinct.

With that, the difficulty of the surgery dropped from an S rank to a D rank. A surgeon with any kind of experience with this sort of surgery would be unlikely to make a mistake with such clear anatomical structures.

[That was impressive. The adhesions were so severe but it took him only a few minutes to completely expose the underlying structures.]

[This separation process can be written into medical textbooks as every step was done very clearly. I assume the surgery can be finished within the next five minutes.]

[It seems like a dream, I'm asleep right now. From the moment the laparoscope was inserted until now, it has only been around eight minutes and the surgery is finishing soon.]

Yes. The surgery was almost over.

Zheng Ren had tackled every complicated issue in the surgery in a very simple manner within a few minutes. The only thing he needed to do right now was to separate the gallbladder from the gallbladder bed with an ultrasonic dissector, clamp the cystic duct and cystic artery, and finally remove the gallbladder.

The surgery was uneventful with an estimated blood loss of less than 10 milliliters. Any possible doubts were handled without hesitation, the manipulation was done confidently and the whole process was smooth sailing.

Only experienced surgeons who had performed hundreds of similar operations would understand how skillful this surgeon was in these few minutes of performance.

Excellent knowledge of anatomy, proficiency in surgery, stable hands, meticulous personality… and expertise in laparoscopic surgery.

That was amazing!

It was truly outstanding!

Innumerable comments going '666' overwhelmed the live broadcast room in Xinglin Garden.

It was a pity that the website was not meant for entertainment and had no virtual gifts in the system. Otherwise, even if Zheng Ren had kept quiet about it, he would have earned more than ten thousand yuan in profit for a surgery completed within twenty minutes.

In the special demands ward, Chief Surgeon Liu closed his eyes and tried to calm his chaotic mind and heart.

'Don't be angry. Don't be nervous,' Chief Surgeon Liu warned himself. This body belonged to him. What would he do in the future if something went wrong with it due to rage?

He felt calmer a few minutes later.

Silence hung in the air and the only sound that reached his ears was Cen Meng's heavy breathing.

Chief Surgeon Liu lacked the courage to open his eyes and watch the surgery progress; he worried that his blood pressure would skyrocket again after witnessing Zheng Ren's proficiency in lysing the adhesions around the gallbladder and in the triangle of Calot.

"Little Cen, is his surgery going smoothly?" asked Chief Surgeon Liu.

"…" Cen Meng remained silent because he was unsure how to respond to that question.

"How is it?" Chief Surgeon Liu was displeased.

"Chief… Chief Surgeon Liu, the surgery is complete," answered Cen Meng softly after a few moments of hesitation.

What? Finished?

No way!

That was impossible!

Chief Surgeon Liu ignored his control of his blood pressure and snapped his eyes open, only to see that the image on the television was way beyond his expectations. It was not adhesiolysis, the separation of the gallbladder from the gallbladder bed, or even the clipping of the cystic duct and artery with an absorbable or titanium clip.

Zheng Ren was aspirating the residual bile in the gallbladder fossa with an aspirator…

That was… too fast…

IndexChapter 57

Index

Book

Chapter 57: The Demon In Sea City

[I'm speechless. God, are you accepting any disciples?]

[Which hospital is the god working at? I can't fight the urge to further my studies anymore.]

[My fifty-meter surgical sword is craving blood. I'm going to surgery now. Wait for my good news, everyone.]

The live broadcast room in Xinglin Garden was barraged with '666'.

The subsequent procedures were nothing new as they were similar to surgical wound closures in open surgeries. The battle would be over in two to three minutes.

Only a few viewers stared at the operation on the screen in distress. They were veterans of this live broadcast room who had witnessed this surgeon's idea of using protein-based surgical glue to close the subcutaneous layer, and were worried about missing any details in this surgery.

However, the following surgical steps were plain and simple, pure textbook, with no additional moves.

If they had to pick out a difference, it was that the host surgeon was very stable in his manipulation, and every step was done clearly and purposefully.

The host surgeon had actually finished a surgery with a difficulty level of 9.5 without making any mistake, and many viewers failed to grasp what had just transpired.

Of the attending doctors and deputy senior consultants, who had performed dozens or more surgeries so far, only a few of them could understand the essential steps of this operation.

"He didn't even have an assistant. Who was the camera holder just now?" mumbled the perplexed Chief Surgeon Liu who was shutting his eyes tightly to avoid watching Zheng Ren's surgery for a split second further.

The camera holder was basically a surgical assistant whose job was to ensure a clear operative view by holding the laparoscope. It was the same as a surgical assistant holding the retractor in open surgery, but a camera holder was much more important in comparison.

If a surgical assistant was unavailable, a self-retaining retractor could at least be used.

However, a laparoscope could not be fixed, and if the camera holder was unable to keep up with the surgeon's pace, the operative process would be affected.

Chief Surgeon Liu was unable to come up with an explanation despite racking his brain. How was Zheng Ren able to finish a laparoscopic cholecystectomy in less than twenty minutes when he did not even have an assistant?

Visit our comic site Webnovel.live

Cen Meng was momentarily stunned after listening to Chief Surgeon Liu's mumble. Then, he took out his phone and sent a WeChat message.

He received a reply shortly.

Cen Meng smiled bitterly upon reading the message. In the absence of a surgical assistant, the camera holder turned out to be a scrub nurse—Xie Yiren…

He finished a laparoscopic cholecystectomy just like that?

Yes, that was it.

Zheng Ren began suturing the surgical wounds. Even though the three incisions were less than one centimeter each, he still had the habit of using absorbable sutures to close the wounds with the running subcuticular suture technique.

"Chief Zheng, do you have obsessive-compulsive disorder?" Xie Yiren had begun tidying up the surgical instruments and, upon noticing it, found Zheng Ren's choice of wound closure funny.

A reverse cutting needle with a size seven or four suture thread was more than enough to suture this sort of incision, but Zheng Ren was willing to spend more time to perform a running subcuticular suture technique instead.

"Haha, I want to do everything perfectly," replied Zheng Ren with a smile.

The surgery progress bar on the upper right corner of his vision reached 100 percent after the last surgical wound was sutured.

Zheng Ren was satisfied.

The intensive training in the System's operating theater had proven to be very effective.

Zheng Ren was aware of the difficulty of this surgery, but he had performed more than a hundred cholecystectomies with similar difficulty levels in the System.

Practice made perfect—that was the moral of the story.

At the end of the operation, the patient woke from his general anesthesia. Patient transfer was initiated and the resected gallbladder was sent to pathology.

The patient's family member was sitting on a hard plastic bench outside the operating theater, visibly anxious and restless.

One of his classmates led a group in a Class Three Grade A Hospital in Imperial Capital, but they had recently fallen off contacting each other. Would it be inappropriate to seek him out only when trouble arose? After hesitating for a few seconds, he opened WeChat on his phone and started consulting his classmate.

Soon, he received a response—It was very difficult to perform surgery on this type of cholecystitis, especially when the B-scan report showed a severely edematous gallbladder wall, indicating that it had been inflamed for a few days.

His heart sank immediately.

"It can't be helped. That's the most common complication of acute toxic liver injury, and antibiotics can't prevent this occurrence either. I once encountered a patient whose liver was badly damaged due to pesticide consumption and was on conservative treatment with antibiotics. In the end, he developed fungal infection complicated with cholecystitis," his classmate shared.

It was framed as advice but just made the man's heart sink deeper into the ground.

"You should have told me earlier and sent your father here; the success rate of the surgery will be at least 30 percent higher. This sort of surgery requires patience to lyse the adhesions. It'll take at least three hours to complete the surgery, and that doesn't even include the time taken for anesthesia to take effect and wear off. All things considered, the surgery will require at least four to five hours to complete, so don't worry."

He felt stabbed again.

"Besides, I think the possibility of successful laparoscopic surgery is quite low. It's highly likely that the surgeon will ask you to sign another set of documents and change to an open surgery instead."

There were other messages from his classmates.

Those who studied medicine and engaged with the medical field generally had low emotional quotients and were more direct in their conversations, just like his classmate.

Then, the doors of the operating theater opened and Zheng Ren appeared at the doorstep with a surgical stretcher trolley.

The patient's son quickly put his phone away and approached Zheng Ren anxiously.

"Chief Zheng, do you want a signature again? Was the surgery not going well and you decided to change to an open surgery instead?" asked the patient's son nervously, failing to notice the stretcher trolley behind Zheng Ren.

"The surgery went on smoothly. Do you want to look at the gallbladder?" asked Zheng Ren.

"…" Smoothly? The patient's son was slightly confused.

How long had it been? The surgery had been finished within one hour, including the time taken for anesthesia to kick in and wear off? His classmate had mentioned all these to him just now, but what about the speculated four to five hours of surgery time?

Zheng Ren watched the patient's son stand still like a statue without any response or attempt to assist with the patient transfer.

"What's wrong? Come and lend me a hand," said Zheng Ren.

"Uh…" The patient's son snapped out of his thoughts and asked anxiously, "Are the adhesions serious?"

"Yes, severe adhesions."

"So how did you finish it so quickly?" The more questions the patient's son asked, the more uncertain he was about the current situation. Was it possible that the surgeon closed the abdomen straight away after realizing that it was actually a difficult case? Many people had heard similar rumors.

"Are the difficulty and duration of the surgery related?" Zheng Ren pushed the stretcher trolley and said, "Please press the button for the elevator."

The patient quickly called the elevator and returned to help steer the trolley.

Something just did not sound right. Should the surgery not have taken longer if it was more difficult? Why did Doctor Zheng's words contradict his understanding of the situation?

The surgery was too quick. His family and friends, who had been informed about the case, were still on their way to the hospital when the patient was transferred back to the ward.

After ensuring that the patient's vital signs on the ECG monitor had stabilized, Zheng Ren then returned to his office to give medical orders.

The patient's son left the ward and went to the operating theater when the rest of the family arrived. He wanted to see what the resected gallbladder looked like.

The nurse from the operating theater retrieved the specimen container with the resected gallbladder in it after he explained himself.

There was slender gallbladder tissue with a smooth surface inside. All pus collections had been set aside after they had been removed.

The patient's son was relieved to see no blood on it, as laypeople judged the situation by the amount of blood on the specimen. If there was no blood on it, it meant that the surgery had been successful. He then took a photo of it as a souvenir.

Just as he was about to return to the ward, there was a notification on his WeChat.

He opened it and saw that it was a message from his classmate.

"Don't worry about it. Even though Sea City General Hospital has an average medical standard, they shouldn't have any problem removing the gallbladder." His classmate "comforted" him in an outrageous manner.

"The surgery was complete and everything went well," he replied to the text message.

"!!!!!" His classmate replied with five exclamation marks.

"Really." The patient's son sent the photo he took just now.

The gallbladder, pus collections and adhesive tissue were clearly visible.

Normally, pathological specimens did not contain any pus collection as they would simply break into shreds during dissection, leaving nothing to send to pathology.

However, the photo showed the removed pus collection and adhesive tissue still intact next to the gallbladder, which had been cleanly resected with its anatomical structures well visualized.

"Since when did Sea City have such a professional surgeon?!" asked his classmate in WeChat.

If he had not seen it with his own eyes, he would definitely not have believed that someone actually possessed the skills to resect the gallbladder so professionally.

The patient's son read his classmate's response and felt a sense of pride in his heart.

Chief Zheng from Sea City General Hospital was indeed a demon!

IndexChapter 58

Index

Book

Chapter 58: Bronze Rank in The King

Zheng Ren documented the surgery while recalling its preoperative process.

He had gained a lot from the intensive training in the System's operating theater. Moreover, he had a feeling that the increment in his overall skill level had had some effects on certain subspecialty surgeries as well.

Should he put all his savings of 930 skill points into the general surgery skill tree?

After contemplating for a while, Zheng Ren decided to wait.

Old Chief Physician Pan was extremely satisfied with Zheng Ren's surgery. After the patient had recovered from general anesthesia, his side effects were not serious and he did not even feel much pain.

It was indeed a wise decision to force Zheng Ren's transfer to the emergency department. This thought put a delighted smile on Old Chief Physician Pan's face.

However, the establishment of an emergency center could not depend solely on one doctor. No matter how strong Zheng Ren was, even if his body was made entirely of metal, how many nails could be made out of him in the end?

The more outstanding Zheng Ren's performance was, the heavier the burden on Old Chief Physician Pan's shoulders.

The patient's condition was stable. Zheng Ren proceeded to oversee the emergency department while Old Chief Physician Pan rushed to the medical administration division.

Naturally, his purpose there was to demand more manpower. The surgical assistant in Zheng Ren's surgery today turned out to be a scrub nurse. It would be utterly humiliating if anyone caught wind of this.

Old Chief Physician Pan strode toward his destination. His presence had annoyed the chief of the medical administration division greatly these past few days.

Dark clouds swarmed above Chief Zhou of the medical administration division instantly upon seeing Old Chief Physician Pan through the window.

If hospital management transferred doctors from any department to the emergency department, he would definitely offend the senior consultant of the corresponding department.

After all, every clinical department had a shortage of medical staff, so it would be very difficult to make an interdepartmental transfer.

Most importantly, no doctors wanted to work in the emergency department.

Visit our comic site Webnovel.live

The emergency department was just like Siberia—a place for exiled criminals.

The fact that Old Chief Physician Pan was here at the medical administration division again made Chief Zhou pull at his hair in frustration.

If this situation continued, Chief Zhou firmly believed that Old Chief Physician Pan would consider the medical administration division his home.

The very thought of seeing that square face every day at work sent a chill down Chief Zhou's spine.

"Chief, this is the information you requested."

Chief Zhou's eyes shone brightly. Why did he not think of her before?

"Little Chang, how long have you been working in the medical administration division?" Chief Zhou put his thoughts into action quickly before Old Chief Physician Pan could arrive at the office.

"Five months. I'll be able to return in another," answered the lady whom Chief Zhou addressed.

Little Chang's full name was Chang Yue, a twenty-five-year-old woman who stood between 162 and 163 centimeters and sported a pair of black-framed spectacles.

Despite her young age, she was neither carefree and joyous but appeared mature and prudent instead. She was a bachelor's degree holder from the third batch of undergraduate students within the province. In Sea City General Hospital, this type of doctor was the least favored and had very limited opportunities for promotion.

After her graduation, she had come to Sea City General Hospital by chance and was hired as a resident doctor in the obstetrics and gynecology department.

A few months ago, a female patient was admitted to the ward in the obstetric and gynecology department due to post-miscarriage vaginal bleeding. She was accompanied by a paramour but unfortunately, her husband was on the scene as well.

The cuckold lost his mind instantly and cut his unfaithful wife's carotid artery with a fruit knife on the spot. Blood splattered up to the ceiling and everyone fled in terror.

Everyone was frozen to the spot when the man walked out of the ward with a bloodstained fruit knife, but Little Chang was unusually calm and started speaking to the man about ideals, life, worldly affairs… The conversation continued until police officers arrived on the scene.

The man had cried with tears and snot flowing down his cheeks as he gave up without a struggle.

Her skills in initiating conversation made her a king in this category.

Logically, Little Chang should have been commended, but things did not develop as planned.

One of the frightened patients had had an accidental prenatal disturbance as she ran out of the ward and ended up having a miscarriage.

The patient's family members sued the hospital and demanded compensation of one million yuan.

In the end, Little Chang had to take the fall as she had been the doctor on duty that day. She received admonition and was suspended for six months.

Such disorganized nonsense was common in the hospital and the only difference was who the scapegoat would be each time.

Little Chang merely assumed that she had run out of luck and reported to the medical administration division without crying or argument.

She always completed her assignments well. One could imagine her being a brick that could be utilized anytime and anywhere.

Chief Zhou had initially planned to let her continue working in the medical administration division, but she just smiled and rejected his kind offer twice.

Trouble would be inevitable if she returned to the obstetrics and gynecology department. Those who framed her would probably feel guilty upon seeing her but would not mind digging a pit for her again if the need arose.

The chief of the medical administration division had witnessed this dark side of people countless times in his life.

Such being the case, what about transferring her to the emergency department?

"Little Chang, your admonition is coming to an end. What are your plans after this?" The chief of the medical administration division put on a kind expression and asked softly.

"I'm going to continue my clinical work. I don't know how to perform other tasks, anyway," answered Little Chang in a relaxed manner.

"It'll be troublesome in the obstetrics and gynecology department in the future."

"You're right." Little Chang was well aware of her situation.

"I've an idea. Why don't you give the emergency department a try?" The chief of the medical administration division had no time to explain further and stated his intention directly when Old Chief Physician Pan disappeared from the transparent French window.

"The emergency department?"

"Old Chief Physician Pan has set up an emergency center recently. I think you'll benefit more in the long run if you go there." The chief of the medical administration division was sincere and earnest in his explanation. "Old Chief Physician Pan is different from the others. He was born a soldier and is very protective of his own subordinates. If you encounter similar incidents again and your superior is Old Chief Physician Pan, he will definitely not ask you to take the blame for his safety."

"…" Little Chang kept quiet and gave it some thought.

Her double eyelids were conspicuous despite her small eyes, which made appear that her eyelids were actually bigger than her eyes.

Her eyelashes were long and radiated an aura of an elf with every blink, but her gaze remained indifferent no matter who she was talking to. Even as she faced the chief of the medical administration division, who held the power to decide her fate, her tone was respectful but did not contain the slightest mote of flattery.

Not only was there a lack of flattery, she even appeared slightly… apathetic.

"What do you think? Old Chief Physician Pan is a god. If you want to have a breakthrough in the medical field with your current educational background, it's better for you to work in a newly established department." The chief of the medical administration division was trying to brainwash Little Chang like a Grandma Wolf constantly tempting the little white rabbit.

The little white rabbit smiled in response. "Even if I want to go, I still have one more month of admonition."

"Don't worry about it." The chief of the medical administration division waved his hand immediately after knowing that Little Chang had been persuaded. "Anyone who dares to have a different opinion will come to the medical administration division to get their dues, or maybe they will go to the emergency department instead."

Perhaps, in his smugness, the chief of the medical administration division worded his last statement wrong, which embarrassed him slightly.

Incidentally, Old Chief Physician Pan barged into the office.

He sat directly on the couch in the office and asked, "Chief Zhou, where are my men?"

"Haha, Old Chief Physician Pan, you arrived just in time." In order to conceal his embarrassment, the chief of the medical administration division smiled and said, "Little Chang has agreed to work in the emergency department."

"Little Chang?" Old Chief Physician Pan glanced at the lady before him, obviously unsatisfied.

He needed male doctors who could perform surgery, not female doctors.

The medical industry had always treated women as men and men as livestock. Naturally, Old Chief Physician Pan was dissatisfied by the fact that he had lost one of his livestock to work his butt off.

However, Old Chief Physician Pan recognized this female doctor and admired her attitude since the rumors around her had been widely spread within the hospital.

Old Chief Physician Pan did not refuse the offer, but continued to ask, "Do you think one is enough?"

"There is a batch of students under training this year. I'll give them to you as long as they agree to stay, how does that sound?" Chief Zhou's promise was basically pie in the sky.

After arguing for some time, Old Chief Physician Pan solidified Chief Zhou's impression that he would be a thorn in the chief's side every day if his manpower remained inadequate.

Then he said, "Little Chang, pack your stuff and return to the emergency department with me."

Little Chang nodded obediently.

She took her bag with only a few items in it and followed Old Chief Physician Pan.

The chief of the medical administration division sighed in relief after Old Chief Physician Pan disappeared from view. He had managed to overcome today, but what about tomorrow?

He hoped Little Chang was good at her job and could satisfy Old Chief Physician Pan's needs temporarily.

Last Chapter Next Chapter