Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Even though Ling Ran had never performed a tracheotomy on a human being, he had done it on dogs before.
In medical school, animal experiments were the main channel for students to learn surgical maneuvers. In Yun Hua Medical University, dogs were used by students to practice tracheotomy.
The anesthetist said, “Propofol’s usually used on pets. It was created by ICI Chemist, Roger James. But it has to be used together with another drug… It’s called mido something.”
“Midazolam.” An anesthetist who had a dog at home jogged over. He petted the dog’s head and said, “It’s a combination of sodium chloride, edetate disodium, benzyl alcohol, and sodium hydroxide. I’ll concoct it. Can you examine the dog or something first? Give it oxygen…”
The dog-owning anesthetist went to the medication cabinet and began to look for the ingredients.
Ling Ran hemmed in acknowledgement and put his stethoscope on. He first performed auscultation, then percussion. Next, he checked the dog’s lung function before he calculated its breathing rate. Even though he was performing a physical examination on a dog, he did it the same way he would on humans. Ling Ran did not know if there was any method of physical examination specifically designed for dogs, but under those circumstances, the physical examination for humans would have to do.
“Forteen breaths per minute.” After Ling Ran calculated the dog’s number of breaths, he asked, at a loss, “What is a dog’s breathing rate supposed to be?”
A nurse looked it up on Baidu and said, “Ten to thirty breaths per minute.”
“Then, what does fourteen breaths mean?” Ling Ran was still at a loss.
Doctor Zhou sauntered over with his hands clasped behind his back. He suddenly had the urge to laugh. He said, “This is the kind of question a medical intern like you is supposed to ask.”
The medical staff around them could not help but laugh.
At that moment, the dog-owning anesthetist returned. After he heard the dog’s indices from Ling Ran, he raised the syringe in his hand and said, “I’ll perform an intramuscular injection.”
After he said that, he moved next to the Labrador and lowered his head to look at its wound. He then injected the anesthetics.
Chestnut, the police dog twitched for a moment, but it no longer had enough strength to struggle.
Soon, the police dog’s limbs relaxed, and its breaths also became softer.
“Get the dog’s skin ready. If you can, secure the dog’s limbs.” The dog-owning anesthetist started to order everyone around as he looked at his phone. ( NovelFull )
The nurse muttered as she stared at the large dog, which was more than forty pounds, with a troubled expression. “Get the dog’s skin ready?”
“Yes, get the dog’s skin ready. Shave all its fur around its neck. Hurry up, it’s already having difficulty breathing,” the anesthetist urged the nurse.
“Were you a veterinarian before this?” Doctor Zhou asked the dog-owning anesthetist.
“My friend’s a veterinarian.” The dog-owning anesthetist had on a serious expression. He glanced at the image on his phone again, and was obviously conducting an on-the-spot teaching session for the group.
All the young doctors and nurses who were carrying out their tasks paused for a moment, but they resumed their work soon after.
What else could they do? It was already a fortunate thing to have someone provide guidance to them.
When faced with dire circumstances, all surgeons needed guidance.
Most doctors did not care about whether a dog lived or died. All doctors had caused the death of a few dogs when they were medical students. However, the current situation was different because the dog involved was a police dog, and it was a police dog who had saved human lives. The doctors were willing to put in an hour or two of effort to save it.
“It’s ready.”
By the time the nurse got the dog’s skin ready, the dog was already having serious difficulty in breathing.
Ling Ran carefully chose a scalpel and made a vertical incision along the dog’s bare neck. He then put down the scalpel and performed a blunt dissection on the dog’s muscular layer to expose the dog’s trachea.
After making a horizontal incision on the dog’s trachea, Ling Ran inserted the tube accurately and connected it to the oxygen tank. Chestnut’s breathing immediately became a lot smoother.
Throughout the entire process, Ling Ran did not explicitly try to be quick.
Even though situations where the patients had difficulty breathing and almost suffocated were very urgent matters, as long as it was not urgent to the point that they could not breath at all, emergency tracheotomy was not necessary.
Tracheotomies always came with sequelae, and the sequelae of an emergency tracheotomy was even more troublesome. Hence, as long as the patient could still endure the difficulties in breathing, an ordinary tracheotomy instead of an emergency one could alleviate the symptoms for a while.
Of course, there should not be too long of a delay.
Doctor Zhou watched Ling Ran from the side with his hands clasped behind his back.
Even though it looked as if he was doing nothing, he was actually standing beside Ling Ran to prevent Ling Ran from making a mistake.
In the Emergency Department, a tracheotomy was considered an extremely minor surgery. One just had to make an incision, which spanned across four tissue layers, at the area above the trachea and make a small incision on the trachea between two cervical cartilages before one inserted the oxygen tube. The damage was considered very small, and it was not a dangerous procedure either.
Nonetheless, it was obvious that there were often medical interns who made mistakes when they performed such surgery.
Just imagine the things that happened during handicraft lessons for school children, or how some adults acted when assembling furniture at home. Those were the types of mistakes that medical interns could make.
There were at least standardized models for handicraft and furniture. Besides, the sizes of the parts were uniform, the steps were obvious, and they came with manuals. They were designed in a way where they could be easily assembled. Even so, those assembling something for the first time would still do so in an extremely unskilled manner. It would not even be a joke if a cardiothoracic surgeon was unable to assemble his own furniture well.
This showed just how important practice and experience were.
It was still all right for medical interns and housemen to practice procedures such as injections on patients. However, they may make unretractable mistakes while they carry out procedures such as tracheotomies and cardiopulmonary resuscitations if they did a step wrongly throughout the entire procedure. Medical interns and housemen would need to have practiced a lot in private to perform such procedures, and they needed an opportune moment for them to practice their skills.
The other medical staff only allowed Ling Ran to carry out the tracheotomy because the patient was a dog.
Even so, Doctor Zhou still wanted to supervise him from the side.
“Have you practiced this before?” Doctor Zhou only asked Ling Ran after he was done with the procedure.
“Not really, I just learned it quite recently.” Even though Ling Ran’s answer was a little strange, it was the truth. ( NovelFull )
Once Ling Ran ensured that the dog’s life was no longer in danger, he started to suture the dog’s wound.
As a police dog, Chestnut wore a stab-resistance vest specifically designed for canines. Hence, there were no external wounds on its chest and belly. However, there were many lacerations on its limb, and there was a wound on the anatomic danger zone behind its ears.
If a human being had such a wound, a CT scan or MRI scan would definitely be necessary before surgery could be performed.
The dog did not get to receive such a comprehensive treatment. After the doctors assessed its wound based on their experience and decided that there was no major damage, they injected antibiotics into the dog and let Ling Ran fully suture the wound.
It was actually very easy for doctors to work that way. However, under ordinary circumstances, even if a patient’s family members requested that they do as such, they could not work in such a manner, because they would be dealing with human lives.
Since Ling Ran possessed Master Level Appositional Suturing Technique, as long as he was able to insert the needle head into the flesh, it would be very easy for him to suture external wounds.
Ling Ran sutured the dog’s wounds by connecting a thinner surgical thread to the thicker surgical thread as usual, because he wanted to try his best to minimize the damage on Chestnut’s appearance. He was especially careful when it came to the parts of the skin with pores, and he had to put in some thought every time he was about to insert the needle.
It was no harm for a police dog to look pretty.
“I’m done.” Ling Ran cut off the thin surgical thread and tossed the scissors onto the tray.
Even though he only had to suture a dog, there was still a nurse beside him to assist him. Hence, he did not have to worry about things like bandaging the wound.
The dog-owning anesthetist looked at the monitor with a smile and said, “The job’s done. The dog’s life is not in danger anymore. But… you guys will really have to wash up everything in this place. All right, I’ll take my leave now.”
Even though all the anesthetists belonged to the Department of Anesthesiology, they had all seen with their own eyes how good Huo Congjun was in scolding people. The dog-owning anesthetist turned and left without hesitation the moment he saw that the police dog was all right.
A nurse could not help but let out a mournful sigh. “The head nurse is really going to scold us this time.”
“When that happens, show her the dog. It’ll fine as long as she doesn’t cut your pay.” Doctor Zhou chuckled a few times and petted the police dog. Its eyes were still closed. He then whipped out his phone and took a very loving selfie with the dog before he uploaded it to his Circle of Friends.
The young nurse did not know what else to do. She could only follow Doctor Zhou’s footsteps. She took another selfie with her cheeks puffed out before she uploaded it to her Circle of Friends as well.
Ling Ran turned to wash his hands. When he realized that there was dog fur on his body after his hands were washed, he went to the Operating Area directly to take a shower, and he changed into a new pair of underwear while he was at it. Once he was done with all of that, his whole body relaxed. He then looked into the mirror and asked, ‘System, System, how do I rank in terms of my incision skills right now?’
“Your pencil grip style ranks at 766 in Yun Hua City right now, while your fiddle bow hold technique ranks at 558 in Yun Hua City right now,” the system answered.
Ling Ran furrowed his eyebrows. ‘What was my ranking the last time I asked?’
“Since your inquiry the other day, your ranking in the pencil grip technique in Yun Hua City has not changed, while your ranking in your fiddle bow hold technique has dropped one place.”
“It can even drop?”
“Yes.”
Ling Ran let out a few chuckles. Well, since his ranking could rise, there would always be people whose ranking would drop.
It was only thanks to the comfort brought on by the new pair of underwear against his skin that Ling Ran did not get angry to the point where he would shower another time.
As he thought about it, he returned to the first floor and whipped out his phone. He only managed to treat a dog who needed tracheotomy after he waited for three hours earlier. Ling Ran was not really confident that there would be any more patients.
The atmosphere on the ground floor was joyous though.
When he took a good look at what was going on, he saw that the police dog had regained consciousness and was licking its paw in a cute manner.
The light golden Labrador had a square jaw, and its dark eyes were extremely lively. It looked extremely fascinating with its head tilted and tongue slightly out of its mouth.
The policewoman, who had also just undergone a minor surgery, lay next to the Labrador. Her snow white skin was visible under her hospital gown. One could not tell if she had any makeup on, but her oval face was pretty exquisite, and she had large breasts as well as a thin waist. The sight of her aroused interest in others.
The surrounding male doctors looked at the policewoman, while the young nurses petted the dog. It was really a scene that appealed to both men and women.
Chestnut, the police dog seemed to have smelled Ling Ran’s scent. The moment Ling Ran approached it, it immediately raised its head with a whimper. The policewoman had no choice but to order it, “Chestnut, down.”
The two-year-old police dog was a lot more mature than most twenty-two-year-old human beings. It whined a few times and stopped moving.
Even Ling Ran could not help but go forward and pet the dog a few times.
The policewoman gazed at Ling Ran in a daze for a few seconds before she muttered to herself, “I thought I was hallucinating.”
“Hallucinations could happen as a result of trauma,” Ling Ran answered from a doctor’s perspective.
The policewoman’s face immediately turned red, and she said in a soft voice, “I… didn’t mean… By the way, my name is Qin Min. Thank you for saving my dog.”
“You’re welcome.” Ling Ran flashed that smile of his, which the patients loved to see. It was a skill that he had been practicing as of late.
The policewoman’s face turned even redder.
“Woof…” Chestnut, the police dog barked softly and looked suspiciously at the policewoman. It sensed the policewoman smelling like how she usually did every time they were about to go on a major mission. Hence, the dog immediately became focused. It looked like it was on standby and it awaited the policewoman’s order.