Great Doctor Ling Ran

“Old Lu, Old Lu, it’s your turn.” Ma Yanlin kicked Lu Wenbin before he fell unconscious on the bed next to him.

Of course, Lu Wenbin was equally unresponsive. He also made no noise.

The doctor in the next bed had no choice but to get up. He laid his fingers on Ma Yanlin’s neck to first confirm a pulse. Then he nudged Lu Wenbin, “Old Lu, Old Lu… Old Lu time to get up… Old Lu, the pork trotters are burning.”

“Impossible!” Lu Wenbin instantly sat up straight.

The resident doctor who called him to get up was scared out of his wits and could not refrain from laughing. He said, “Good that you didn’t die from heart attack, because I nearly died from one.”

“You can sleep for six hours a day, how can you die from a heart attack?” Lu Wenbin laughed self-deprecatingly.

The doctor on the next bed nodded in agreement and said, “I heard that US resident doctors only sleep for four hours, we have to learn from them.”

As he spoke, he went back to his bed and wrapped himself in his blanket. He stretched lazily and continued to play with his mobile phone.

Perhaps he woke up on the wrong side of bed, but with an enraged face, Lu Wenbin kicked Ma Yanlin. He wore his slippers and went to wash his face. Then, he went to the Operating Area with a toothbrush and a mug.

When he arrived at the Operating Area, Lu Wenbin brushed his teeth while taking a shower. He then went out to change into scrubs. He looked presentable, even though he really was not.

The Emergency Department had its own operating theaters. To the doctors there, they could move about freely compared to when they were at the surgical floor, and for the patients, they were less likely susceptible to bacteria, because the chances of tolerant bacteria appearing in the operating theaters in the Emergency Department were lower. After all, it was extremely easy for hospitals to unintentionally breed bacterium like superbugs.

“Doctor Ling, I’m here.” Lu Wenbin kicked open the door to the operating theater and yawned again.

“Okay.” Ling Ran had just finished the operation. His full attention was on the wound. He did not even turn his head around to look at Lu Wenbin.

Once Yu Yuan became familiar with the process, she energetically started the briefing, “The patient is sixty-seven years old. After the fall, he used his right hand to support himself, causing a three-fingered fracture, his index finger is semi-detached…”

Lu Wenbin clicked his tongue and said, “Sounds really terrible. I’ve seen people breaking their fingers after jumping off buildings. I’ve even seen one who broke his finger while parachuting last time. There was another who fell and broke his fingers while playing outside. There was another one who was unfortunate enough to fall in his own home and break his fingers. From the way I see it…”

Su Jiafu coughed on his stool and said, “Doctor Lu, the patient is on half anesthesia today.”

Li Wenbin was shocked, “Shoot! Why is it regional anesthesia [1], don’t we always administer general anesthesia?”

“Isn’t it good to just receive regional anesthesia?” The patient suddenly opened his mouth and asked. It scared Lu Wenbin even further.

Over the course of the last few weeks, he followed Ling Ran to perform M-Tang technique surgeries and finger replantation surgeries every day, and Ling Ran always used general laryngeal mask airway anesthesia. The terror brought by the patient suddenly speaking was as great as cadavers suddenly sitting down to criticize his incisions. The most terrifying nightmare when he was in medical school crept into his mind.

“Please pay attention and not move, relax. The most fearful thing during regional anesthesia would be to move. If you move, our previous efforts will all go to waste.” Su Jiafu could not help but remind the patient.

Yu Yuan laughed until her round glasses shook. She said, “The patient refused general anesthesia and strongly urged for regional anesthesia. Doctor Ling agreed to it.”

Lu Wenbin could not help but pout. He was used to operating on patients under general anesthesia. He was really unwilling to perform a surgery while the patient was under regional anesthesia.

Although Ling Ran’s operating theater had always been silent, it also meant that they did not need to worry about saying the wrong things.

“Forceps, please.” Lu Wenbin sat up straight and put his eyes against the microscope.

“Why did you switch people?” The patient was suddenly very concerned.

Yu Yuan smiled and said, “Doctor Lu’s technique is better than mine.”

“Oh, but…”

“Another pair of forceps, please.” Lu Wenbin threw the original forceps on the tray, interrupted the patient’s inquiry, and opened another topic, “Old Su, I haven’t heard any news about your thesis. How is it going?”

“I’m still at the stage of accumulating medical cases.” Su Jiafu felt a little guilty as he played with the stool. His eyes were bloodshot.

“Yu Yuan, I heard that you’re also writing a thesis, have you written it?”

“The medical case report? I wrote it and emailed it to the Journal of Medical Case Reports,” Yu Yuan answered breezily. She realized that Lu Wenbin did not want her to chat with the patient.

Yu Yuan might have joined the hospital before Lu Wenbin, but she still decided to go along Lu Wenbin based on his experience.

Lu Wenbin was somewhat surprised and asked, “Is your medical case report written for an English journal?”

“Of course.”

“How much is the influence factor?”

“About 0.3,” Yu Yuan replied.

Before Lu Wenbin could breathe a sigh of relief, Su Jiafu said, “Most medical cases in journals have no influence factor. It’s already considered very worthwhile for a medical case report of several hundred words to have an influence factor of 0.3.”

Yu Yuan smiled and said, “They have higher requirements for the diagrams.”

“About that… will I experience any residual effects after this regional anesthesia?” The patient looked up at them.

Su Jiafu was a little embarrassed. He said, “Didn’t we already tell you about the residual effects?”

The patient said, “I don’t remember them clearly.”

“The drugs for anesthesia will be quickly metabolized and excreted out of your system. You don’t have to worry too much. General anesthesia and regional anesthesia can both be metabolized and excreted from your body very quickly.” Lu Wenbin did not let Su Jiafu read the list of sequelae. Instead, he spoke in a conversational tone.

“Just metabolized?”

“Yup, you won’t suffer any effects after a few weeks.”

“They all say that our memories will be affected…”

Lu Wenbin said sulkily, “When a person is old, that person’s memory will decline. That is not the effect of anesthetics.”

“I am only sixty-seven!” The patient emphasized.

Lu Wenbin was stunned for two seconds He admitted that he had made a fool of himself, and his tone became more soothing. “Let’s not talk about its side effects. Your fingers are now broken. We have to fix it, and it can’t be done without any anesthetics.”

“Yeah, if a person is unlucky, everything will go wrong.” The sixty-seven-year-old man sighed heavily. “I don’t know how long I will have to lie in bed, and how long I will take to recover.”

Lu Wenbin had to chat while doing his job as an assistant. He felt his head pound.

Ling Ran did the sutures attentively from the start to the end.

He looked as if he was playing games while he performed his surgeries. Once he started, he did not care what happened around him.

The sixty-seven-year-old patient was older, and compared to young people, not only would his recovery be problematic, but he would also suffer from osteoporosis, muscle weakening, problems with the blood and blood vessel, and so on.

When these problems manifested in finger replantations, it meant that internal fixation could not be done properly because of osteoporosis, blood vessels were difficult to suture because they were brittle, and the high blood viscosity would affect blood circulation…

Ling Ran had to carefully avoid all these problems in order to perfectly complete the finger replantation.

For doctors, success meant they completed a difficult surgical game, and failure meant a mistake from the start to the end of the surgery.

“Alright, I’m done with the index finger, Lu Wenbin.” Ling Ran let Lu Wenbin suture the skin so that he could deal with the fracture of the remaining two fingers.

Although Ling Ran did not have a specialized skill book on bone fractures, his Finger Replantation Skill contained a secondary skill that allowed him to handle bones. It was more than enough to handle finger bones. Ling Ran had also run into multiple cases of bone fractures before. Hence, very soon, he also finished with the dressing of the wound.

When the patient was pushed into the ward, Lu Wenbin first grabbed Su Jiafu’s stool and sat down before he obediently turned his neck to Ling Ran’s direction. He waited for Ling Ran’s hand to grab his neck before he heaved a long sigh.

“Doctor Ling, you never operated on patients under regional anesthesia before, why did you do it today?” Lu Wenbin asked while he breathed in.

“There is no one more suitable than this patient,” Ling Ran answered very clearly.

“Didn’t Director Huo contact many hospitals? Didn’t they send in any patients today?” Lu Wenbin felt a bit strange. Over the course of the past few days, the Emergency Department received an overwhelming number of patients in need of finger replantations daily, so much so that they sent the patients they could not treat in time to the Hand Surgery Department.

Ling Ran could only shake his head. “I operated on the ones sent to us too quickly during the first half of the night, and I finished the balance. Once I considered the fact that this patient is slightly older and also strongly requested for regional anesthesia, I operated on him.”

This answer made Lu Wenbin feel like laughing and crying at the same time. He immediately realized something and asked, “How many fingers did you replant in the first half of the night?”

“Five fingers.”

“No wonder Ma Yanlin looked like an overworked donkey.” Lu Wenbin was sympathetic for a while.

Su Jiafu looked at Lu Wenbin and cackled.

“What are you laughing at?” Lu Wenbin did not have a good feeling about this.

Su Jiafu looked at Lu Wenbin pitifully and said, “Doctor Ling already called Director Huo to increase the workload.”

“Increase…” Lu Wenbin felt that his hands and feet were numb. He said in disbelief, “It’s already the second half of the night, shouldn’t we be more relaxed?”

“It’s quiet in the second half of the night,” Ling Ran answered as if this was completely reasonable.

One surgery after another.

One bed after bed.

When Lu Wenbin was numb from the number of surgeries he performed, Ma Yanlin replaced him. Lu Wenbin would wake up after his rest, do some ward rounds, and fill up some medical records. When Ma Yanlin’s brain stopped functioning from the surgeries he performed, Lu Wen Bin replaced him. Ma Yanlin would wake up after his rest, do some ward rounds, and fill up some medical records. Yu Yuan served as a long-term second assistant. Sometimes, she took over the position as the first assistant. She followed Ling Ran during his M-Tang technique surgeries, and also did ward rounds and filled up medical records over a long period of time. Very soon, she became so exhausted that she forgot to make beginner-level mistakes.

Ling Ran used four Energy Serums in succession, and was eventually forced to rest twice. At some point of time, his mission progress reached [50/50], and he immediately heard the notification from the system.

[Mission completed: Fifty cases of finger replantations]

[Reward: Intermediate Treasure Chest]