Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Damon laid on the cold operating table in the light blue operating theater.
Nurses were busy tallying the surgical instruments and other equipment as they stood over him.
Tape formed a barricade around the operating table, and behind it were doctors from all over the world. At the corners of the operating theater were doctors from the Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center.
Damon looked at the crowd with his eyes filled with fear. His tears flowed down, and even the nurses threw him strange looks. He was not afraid of their looks. He opened up the dam and wept without any inhibition.
Two streams of tears continuously flowed down his cheek.
As a nineteen-year-old rugby wing forward, Damon once sprinted under the cheers of thousands of people. He once ran wild while his opponents surrounded and intercepted him. He once dodged and ducked while he was chased by rascals. Tears easily came to his eyes, but the floodgates had definitely opened up today!
“Hi, look here,” said the young nurse who wore a little gray rabbit hat softly as she attracted Damon’s attention like how she did with a child.
The icy operating theater was really scary for young children, especially if their parents were not present.
Young nurses with colorful hats were said to attract the attention of young children, and this allowed doctors to perform incisions on the organs and flesh they required.
Damon was clearly way older than a child.
However, his tears were fresh, and he cried a lot as well.
“Doctor Morris… Where is Doctor Morris?” Damon whispered.
After he repeated it twice, the young nurses who were not very fluent in English said, “They are going over the details of your injury.”
“Did it get worse?” Morris was shocked.
“No.” A nurse shook her head.
A foreign doctor saw how scared Damon was and could not help but comforted him. “Your condition has not changed. For now, it is normal. The chief surgeon will be coming in last, and Doctor Morris will come with him.”
Damon breathed a sigh of relief, but he could not help but cry.
*Shick.*
The doors of the operating theater opened wide.
Ling Ran and Doctor Morris entered at the same time.
“Doctor Morris!” Damon saw Morris as if he had seen a family member, and he looked as if he was about to sit up.
“Lie down! Lie down!”
A few medical staff moved up and held Damon down without listening to his explanations, preventing him from most definitely jumping down.
“Doctor Morris… hick… I can’t do this,” Damon wailed.
“Don’t you want to treat your foot injury?” Morris asked Damon.
“I…” Damon closed his eyes and said, “I want to treat my foot injury.”
“Then you must go through your surgery,” Morris persuaded Damon like how he persuaded a child.
Damon looked at Ling Ran as if he wanted to plead for help. There were still traces of tears on his face.
“We will use general anesthesia so you will be asleep. You’ll be awake when the surgery is done.” Since Damon was a five-star patient, Ling Ran explained the situation gently.
An interpreter at the side explained it to Damon.
Damon gaze was blurry from the tears, “Really?”
“Of course.”
“You have to make this work,” Damon said. His expression became resolute while he cried. “I want to play professional games, make money, and take care of my family…”
Ling Ran listened to the words from the interpreter and just nodded before he said to the anesthetist next to him, “Anesthetize him.”
“Okay. This is my first time in anesthetizing a white man,” the anesthetist giggled, then started counting for Damon, “One, two, three, four…”
The young nurse who wore a small gray rabbit hat naturally started swaying and sang in a low voice, “You can’t fall asleep if you toss and turn…”
Damon widened his eyes, because he could not understand what he heard. He looked as if he really could not fall asleep.
“After waking up, the surgery will be done.” Ling Ran comforted the five-star client again.
No one knew whether Damon understood, but he closed his eyes in relief.
At the same time, Ling Ran heard another sound.
A silver-white treasure chest appeared again in front of Ling Ran.
The words Sincere Gratitude popped out as well.
Ling Ran, who had lifted his scalpel, could not help but be stunned for a moment. As a surgeon who had received gifts before, he had the urge to post a question on the Hyacinth Forum. [What should I do when a gift was handed to me by a patient on the operating table and before the anesthesia came into effect?]
“Doctor Ling, Dalang is asleep.” The anesthetist looked at Ling Ran.
“Oh, just a moment,” Ling Ran closed his eyes and accepted the gift while he was at it… no, he accepted the Sincere Gratitude Treasure Chest while he was at it.
Another skill book appeared in front of Ling Ran.
‘Open it,’ Ling Ran muttered in his heart.
The skill book flashed, and familiar words were written on the title page, [Gained the experience of dissecting one hundred feet.]
In other words, Ling Ran had accumulated the experience of dissecting feet two hundred times.
Ling Ran opened his eyes and looked at Damon as he thought, ‘How scared are you?’
A lot of information flooded in.
Ling Ran closed his eyes again and sensed the information silently.
“Give me a moment.” Ling Ran put down the scalpel straight away and walked out of the operating theater.
The twenty or so people in the operating theater, as well as the dozens of people in the demonstration room, could not help but look at each other in bewilderment.
Ji Tianlu rushed out with him. He was in the operating theater as an audience member today, so he did not want to look like he took the lead and let outsiders think that he was operating behind the scenes, which was not fair to Ling Ran. Ji Tianlu could not afford to lose him.
While he was in his scrubs, Ji Tianlu chased after Ling Ran. He chased him to the bathroom and asked him in a whisper, “What’s wrong? Are you a little nervous?”
“I had an idea.” It was more than just an idea. All he could think of was a cadaver.
He might only have another one hundred cases of foot anatomical dissection experience, if he regarded the situation on an international level, a clinician who had the experience of dissecting two hundred feet was very rare and precious.
For professional forensic doctors or anatomists, it was easy to reach the target of dissecting a body two hundred times. If they wanted to reach one thousand times, they would need to be in their middle ages, and they would have to work so hard that they were bald.
However, it was not easy for a clinician to dissect a body two hundred times. Even if they had better circumstances, while it was easy to search for clinicians who had dissected two hundred bodies to learn about the human anatomy in general, clinicians who specialized in dissecting two hundred feet were still rare.
Compared to hand anatomy, foot anatomy was simpler and cruder. Hence, it was not worth putting as much focus into it.
Because of this, when Zhu Tongyi proposed Plan A, everyone did not quite understand his words, having a lack of knowledge concerning the blood supply around the Achilles tendon. The doctors in the twenty-first century were not proficient with this.
The extra experience of one hundred foot anatomical dissections gave Ling Ran a clearer understanding of the vascular network around the Achilles tendon.
“Change of plans.” Ling Ran took off his surgical gown, which was over his scrubs, washed his hands again, and spoke to Ji Tianlu.
Ji Tianlu was about to instinctively oppose the idea, but he managed to resist the urge when the words were at the tip of his tongue.
If Ling Ran were a doctor from his department, he would not lend him an ear.
The operative approach was where the surgical incision began. Different approaches led to very different surgical modes.
For example, colorectal surgery, tangential laparotomy, lateral laparotomy were different operative approaches. They could even be done from the anus, but that was also a different operative approach.
It could be said that changing the operative approach was tantamount to changing the mode of surgery, and this meant a very huge transformation.
It could even be said that if Ling Ran changed the operative approach of the Achilles tendon repair technique, then Plan A would also become an improved version of the original plan, which Ji Tianlu would not agree from any point of view.
However, Ji Tianlu did not dare to simply veto Ling Ran’s suggestion.
This was the image that Ling Ran had built in Ji Tianlu’s heart after knowing him for a fair amount of time.
Ji Tianlu asked politely, “Where do you wish to change?”
“About one inch to the right,” Ling Ran said, “I’ll be able to avoid the veins even more.”
“You won’t be able to see Achilles tendon that way.”
“The incision can be bigger, and I’ll be able to see it,” Ling Ran’s mind ran quickly.
This was indeed a thought he had within a short time, but it was built on the basis of anatomy.
Honestly, with the experience of two hundred cases of foot anatomical dissections, the Perfect Level Achilles Tendon Repair Technique, along with the experience of performing more than one hundred Achilles tendon repairs, Ling Ran was already at the top of the world in terms of skill. If he wanted to change an operative approach, he could do so, but if other doctors wanted to change it, they would not even know where to start.
Surgeons in the world who have reached this level at the age of fifty would not have even considered wasting their lives.
Ji Tianlu was silent.
According to the standard surgical treatment model, the preoperative consultation and preoperative discussion would have actually determined the mode of operation during the surgery.
Strictly speaking, when a chief surgeon enters the operating theater, he was only there to carry out the mode of operation they decided upon before the surgery.
But what was the meaning behind the preoperative discussion and consultations for Damon’s Achilles tendon repair?
The only people who had a Plan B in the world was Ling Ran. Even Zhu Tongyi had merely proposed the concept for Plan A. He could not implement it.
From a medical research point of view, if Ling Ran wanted to make slight modifications to Plan A, it was absolutely normal.
However, it was most inappropriate for them to experiment on surgeries in today’s occasion!
“Why don’t you modify it in the next surgery instead?” Ji Tianlu proposed as professionally as he could.
Ling Ran had received two Sincere Gratitude Treasure Chests from Damon, and he felt that he had a little more responsibility, since he received preoperative gifts. He hesitated a little and said, “Based on Damon’s MRI scan, the position of his vascular network requires some modifications to the operative approach.”
Ji Tianlu had been a surgeon for twenty years. He had lost count on how many unforeseen circumstances he encountered before the surgery, and he also did not say words such as, “If I knew about this or that.” He quickly came to a decision. “Do it, then. You can skip the explanation.”
“Alright!” Ling Ran did not hesitate anymore once he heard what Ji Tianlu said.
The two reentered the operating theater
The discussions in the room came to a swift stop.
Doctor Morris asked worriedly, “Is there a problem, Doctor Ling?”
“There’s no problem.” With the help of the nurses, Ling Ran replaced the surgical gown with another. When he picked up his scalpel, his face was calm.
