Chapter 108 - The Crazies are Always Happy

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Yun Hua Hospital, Neurology Department.

Cao Yue, a female doctor, smiled as she sat on a chair in the electromyography room while watching Lu Wenbin push the gurney against the wall. She said, “Okay, that place will do. I’ll handle the rest from here.”

Lu Wenbin looked at Li Huamin, the patient on the gurney, and asked, “Do you need my help?”

“No need.” Cao Yue smiled and said, “You can just wait outside.”

“This… patient has quite the attitude. You need to pay attention.”

“It’s fine. I have seen numerous patients.” Cao Yue gave him a look.

Lu Wenbin hesitated for a moment and left the Emergency Department after he saw the other person’s impatient expression written all over her face. He found a tall chair, sat on it, and let out a long sigh. Recently, he did not get to be the one who performed the closing of incisions, and his hand itched to do something.

Inside the Emergency Department.

Cao Yue snorted lightly as she said to herself, ‘There are so many patients with attitudes. Who hasn’t seen them?’

The last thing she could bear was the Department of Surgery’s resident doctors. Not only did they have neither skill nor professionalism, but they were also always stubborn, as if they might master skills at any moment. They even tried to educate people from time to time.

From Cao Yue’s point of view, these resident doctors from the Department of Surgery were all inflexible people who did all the manual labor in the hospital.

Although the environment in the operating theater was clean, every operating theater, in fact, would have a sudden surge of patients infected with certain types of pathogens visit them every once in a while. The surgeons’ white gowns were always cleaned only in the morning, and the bloodstains they encountered every day was much more than regular people usually did…

In contrast, Cao Yue’s work environment was much more comfortable. The electromyography room was an ordinary office, and the instrument was connected with the computer. As long as the patch was placed on the patient’s skin, the rest of the operation was all done by the computer.

In terms of appearances, it was more complicated than an electrocardiogram.

This position could be said to be the whole hospital’s most relaxing position, and it was impossible to get this position if a person had no connections with the hospital. One could say the electromyography room was like another world was a completely different world from the surgeons’ working environment.

When Cao Yue thought of this, she would sing in her heart, ‘We’re not the same, not the same…’

“You’re a specialist in nerve testing?” Li Huamin lay on her side, revealing half of her arm, which was covered in a red silk cloth sleeve. It was very bright and beautiful.

Cao Yue stopped singing in her heart and laughed twice. She lifted the patch as she said, “I am a professional on electromyography, not nerve tests. Let me roll up your sleeve, please.”

Cao Yue rolled up the patient’s sleeves as she said, “Your hand has an external fixture, and you’re still able to dress yourself?”

“There are buttons on the back.” Li Huamin replied and asked, “Are my nerves recovering?”

Cao Yue was a little annoyed. “I don’t know, I haven’t tested it yet, who knows.”

“If the nerve isn’t recovering right, it will be a stroke, right?”

“A stroke is a nerve problem of the brain.”

“Then is there any problem with the nerves in my brain?”

“I haven’t tested it, I don’t know as well.”

“Doctor, don’t lie to me. I’m not afraid to die,” Li Huamin said seriously, “I asked my family, and they didn’t say anything. I know everyone is hiding something from me. They’re being good to me, but I just want to know.”

Cao Yue frowned. “But I really don’t know.”

‘Doctor!” Li Huamin became anxious. She lifted the tiny blanket which covered her body and said loudly, “Doctor, I’m not afraid to die, but I want to know why I died. There’s no need for a normal, healthy person to conduct tests on their nerves, and since I’m not crazy, there’s no need for me to test my nervous system either!”

Cao Yue looked at Li Huamin’s red silk Tang suit. She stared at it at for several seconds and felt strangely familiar with it.

Li Huamin’s expression relaxed at once when she realized the clothes on her body had been noticed, and she asked, ” How do you like it? This suit was designed by me. Old people said that the shroud should be red to resemble auspiciousness, but my five basic elements were pink. That’s why I made the embroidery pink, and the cloth scarlet. The rebus of the Wu Fu Peng Shou[1] in the middle is made with gold thread—”

“What are you wearing?” Cao Yue was shocked.

“Grave clothes!” Li Huamin said gravely, “You will be testing my nerves in a while. If there is a problem with my brain, I’ll wear this and jump off the roof so that I won’t trouble my family!”

Li Huamin looked at Cao Yue very seriously and said, “You have to do the test properly, see if there is any problem in my brain!”

“Wait a moment…” Cao Yue twitched as she stood up and opened the office door, then shouted, “Lu… Doctor Lu, that… please come and lend me a hand.”

…

On the second day.

Lu Wenbin stood outside the ward and reported to the department director as he conducted his ward rounds, “The anastomosis of the patient’s nerves are in good condition…”

Li Huamin was semi-reclining on her bed and beckoned to the doctors outside the room.

“Old Du, go in and have a look. We’ll go to the next one. You continue.” Huo Congjun passed the door and sent the associate director into the ward.

Lu Wenbin said, “There’s no problem with the tendon repair, the strength has increased. Doctor Ling’s medical advice indicated that she can begin the early phase of rehabilitation—”

“Just follow Doctor Ling’s medical advice.” Huo Congjun interrupted Lu Wenbin without even listening to much of what he said. He never really did understand much about the things in the Hand Surgery Department, and since he never did understand it, he was happy to let Ling Ran do whatever he saw fit.

In any hospital, if a doctor could do a certain type of surgery over one hundred times and the number of his or her patients who recover well reaches the average number of patients who recover well after receiving such a surgery in the country, then he was an expert of that surgery. Because the more you do the same procedure, the more unusual things you encounter. The percentage of patients who were operated by Ling Ran and received a good rating during their recovery also exceeded 90%.

Of course, doctors in ordinary hospitals may have to spend a few years or even a decade studying if they wished to be qualified for a certain type of surgery.

To repeat a certain type of surgery, not only did the hospital and the department need to cooperate, but the environment must also be suitable. It was considered good if most doctors in most hospitals could get two or three main surgeries every day. If you wanted to accumulate up to a hundred cases of a certain type of surgery, it would take several years.

The doctors’ choices could only be enhanced when they reached the level of a senior attending physician, and when their influence over the department grew, then they could have the surgeries that they want to do. They could even arrange the surgical methods they liked or were good at as the main operation technique used in their department.

Huo Congjun was a military doctor from the Emergency Department. He valued Ling Ran’s talents far more than his qualifications. His trust in Ling Ran was also growing. Therefore, even though he was serious during his ward rounds, he rarely changed Ling Ran’s medical advice. He only did adjustments of the medication and so on when the patient had postoperative complications or other other combined symptoms.

Lu Wenbin was so envious that his feet began to twitch.

In the hospital, a medical director’s interference with young doctors was omnidirectional. Today, they may allow you to have a day off, and let you and your wife make a child. They could also let you work overtime tomorrow to see if a certain patient’s excretion was a natural color. To Huo Congjun, he would only respect the medical advice given by the leaders of treatment groups.

In Yun Hua’s Emergency Department, there were two more chief physicians and two other senior associate directors.

After a while, Department Associate Director Du returned to the medical team.

“Can Ling Ran amalgamate damaged nerves now?” Huo Congjun and Department Associate Director Du conversed to each other softly.

Department Associate Director Du hesitated for a moment and asked, “The patient showed good recovery just now, but is it too rushed if we asked him to perform those cases now?”

“There are many cases of patients needing the amalgamation of damaged nerves. It’s easy to find them as well, so we don’t have to always make calls to search for these patients.” Huo Congjun then whispered, “As far as I know, in Changxi Province, you can do flexor tendon suturing independently. Doctors who do perineurium anastomosis can be counted with your hands. The numbers are even fewer for those who specialize in it.”

Department Associate Director Du laughed for a while.

There were really not many doctors who could do flexor tendon suturing and amalgamate perineurium damage. There were fewer still who specialized in it.

However, there was once a saying that went like this: If there was a forest and you wanted to find a pine tree, you needed to have an ash tree beside it. Then, next to it, there must be an elm tree, and there could be no plants in between.

There were many pine trees, elm trees, and ash trees. What was the significance of those three to be next to each other?

Of course, that metaphor carried a huge amount of significance in a hospital.

Those who could do flexor tendon suturing, nerve anastomosis, and even orthopedic bone surgery would be doing finger replantation all day long. There was no time for them to do flexor tendon suturing on associated neurotmesis.

There were many who could do nerve anastomosis alone, but most of them were doctors from the Neurosurgery Department, and had plenty of craniocerebral surgeries to perform. Once they began, they would work through the whole night. They were also too lazy to get consultations from the Hand Surgery Department.

Of course, the doctors who could do flexor tendon suturing were also very powerful, and also refused to deal with the neurosurgeons’ temper.

Hand surgeries were surgeries that had to be completed within twenty-four hours, and the earlier the treatment, the better the end result. Many patients who suffered from flexor tendon ruptures combined with nerve damage and no broken fingers may only be treated with good flexion repair techniques and a decent epineurium anastomosis. The prognosis basically depended on themselves.

If some large hospitals were too busy, they would ask the patients whether they were willing to amputate…

The ratio of severed finger replantation in the United States was two percent and relied on a strict inspection system. Anyone who smoked, drank, and could not guarantee good lifestyle habits even if they had insurance would not necessarily get two hours of aid from an elite doctor.

So, it did not matter pine trees, elm trees, and ash trees were adjacent to each other, unless you cut them down together.

Doctor Du reluctantly put forward an opinion. “I don’t object it. It’s just that the recovery period of patients with flexor tendon injuries is too long, and the recovery period of nerves is even longer. We don’t have enough wards.”

“Add more if it’s not enough,” Huo Congjun waved his hand. The huge emergency medical center of his dreams should have more than two hundred beds, and he would not mind if he had more than five hundred beds like in the emergency center.

“There are many patients with nerve damages, and we shouldn’t let Ling Ran work too hard. Young people rush into things, but they also have to look where they’re going.” When Doctor Du said this, he asked Lu Wenbin, “Is Ling Ran still doing surgery?”

“Yes, the surgery has only been done halfway. There was a small mishap,” said Lu Wenbin casually. It was considered as one of the reasons why Ling Ran did not accompany them during the ward rounds.

If the other young doctors did not participate with the department Department Associate Director During ward rounds often, it was because they had been given a hard time. However, the hospital’s rules and regulations had always only been directed at ordinary doctors. Doctors with skills had always been special cases.

It was as if whatever the poor students did was wrong, and whatever the good students did was right. Now, Huo Congjun mentioned Ling Ran with a smile on his face as he said, “Ling ran needs to take care of his health. He shouldn’t just work. What time did he arrive today?”

“Four o’clock. Three operations have been done, and now he’s doing the fourth one,” Lu Wenbin said that as he shuddered. The chief came in at four o’clock but actually had to come at three o’clock. There was no explanation for that.

There were only a total of three or four doctors in Yun Hua Hospital who behaved this way, and yet, much to his luck, he ran into one.

Huo Congjun did not think it was strange to start surgery at four in the morning, so he only nodded. “No wonder he told me last time that the whole afternoon was wasted. However, it’ll get better when the medical cases of associated nerve damage add up. But when that day comes, I am afraid that there will be too many referrals from the hospitals affiliated to us…”

As he spoke, Huo Congjun’s cell phone rang melodiously, ‘There was once a wounded goshawk… the wounded goshawk crossed the valley[2]…’

All the doctors held their breaths and looked at the director.

“Okay. I understand. I will gather together the best of the department. We will do our best to ensure the safety and quality of healthcare.” Huo Congjun looked as sharp as an eagle when he put down the phone and said, “Chief Hao’s daughter was burned. Burn team, go get ready. Other doctors should not take this lightly. Hand over your work quickly to the others and be ready to provide support.”

At this point, there was no time to continue the big ward rounds. The group of doctors scattered away, busy with their preparations. Those who should collect medical records went to collect them; those who should pass down medical advice hurriedly did so; those who should arrange for the surgery appointment hurriedly arranged them, and those who needed to use the bathroom rushed to get a cubicle…

Department Associate Director Du moved closer to Huo Congjun anxiously. “Let’s talk about this between you and me. Why didn’t she go to the General Hospital when she got burned?”

The Emergency Department in Yun Hua Hospital was famous for treating burns. But in this area, regardless of the actual level of influence, no one was not as good as Department Director Liu of the People’s Liberation Army General Hospital. The latter was top-ranked in the field of burns.

Huo Congjun looked both sides and whispered, “She burned her feet while she was pouring water.”