Chapter 179: Chapter 172: Pediatrician Gets Beaten
Yang Ping put his tie in the drawer of his office desk, where the business card still lay.
He glanced at it, closed the drawer, and took a moment to visit the little friend with osteosarcoma, Sisi.
“Sisi!” Yang Ping knocked on the door. Her mother seemed to have gone back to make breakfast and hadn’t returned yet.
Sisi was doing her homework, some maths Olympiad problems. She put away her work.
Yang Ping said, “You’re so diligent in your studies.”
Sisi was somewhat embarrassed, “I haven’t been to school for a long time, and I’m behind on a lot of homework. Sister Tang Fei tutors me every afternoon, this is the homework she assigned yesterday. I have to finish it before five-thirty in the afternoon, and she will check it after her shift.”
“Keep fighting!” Yang Ping encouraged her.
She clenched her fist, gesturing a fighting spirit, “Hmm!”
“Can you discuss my condition with me?” Sisi asked, her eyes hopeful.
Yang Ping calmly said, “Just a few fibroids, no need to be nervous.”
“You’re the most powerful doctor, but you seem to be quite cautious about these fibroids. Have you encountered a difficult problem?” Sisi stared at Yang Ping, probing for an answer behind his words.
“Even small problems must be handled with seriousness. This is called ‘treating light matters as if they are heavy’, a doctor must never underestimate the situation.” Yang Ping explained to her.
Children can’t understand these truths. They can only be told kindly half-truths to hide the harsh realities, to make their remaining days happier. She was a pitiful child, a flower that was destined to wilt too soon.
“Your eyes are betraying you, you are lying!” Sisi relaxed her scrutinizing gaze.
Yang Ping dared not look at her, “This time you are mistaken. A doctor would never lie to their patients, they always face objective realities every day.”
Sisi averted her gaze, “Thank you! I think I must have been wrong. You wouldn’t lie to me.”
“Do you have any siblings?” Yang Ping changed the subject and talked to her about life.
No! My grandparents want my parents to have another child, a younger brother, but my parents refused, they even had a quarrel over it.” Sisi’s eyes glittered with clarity.
“What about you?” Sisi asked Yang Ping.
“Like you, I am the only child. It’s a good thing in its own way. Your parents’ love for you is solely yours,” Yang Ping noticed the loneliness in her eyes.
Sisi shook her head, “No, I don’t see it that way, you wouldn’t understand–”
What an interesting child. With just a phrase, ‘you don’t understand’, Yang Ping was left bemused as to how to continue their congenial conversation.
Alright, time to head to the operating room.
Yang Ping bid her goodbye, “I have to get to work now, and you need to continue studying. Let’s end our pleasant talk here.”
Yang Ping and Sisi high-fived. As he stepped out the door, Yang Ping clenched his fist, “Keep up the good work!”
In the operating room, Song Zimo, Tang Fei, and Little Five were performing a surgery, with Zhou Can as the instrument nurse and Xiao Su as the circulating nurse.
“Doctor Yang, good morning!”
“Nurse Su, good morning!”
Xiao Su adjusted a simple operating room chair to the right height and placed it aside. Yang Ping sat down.
“How’s surgery going?” Yang Ping asked.
Song Zimo was performing an ACL reconstruction. He had a profound understanding of the anatomical center of the ligament footprint. Although it wasn’t always accomplished with the first attempt, several measurements and careful search would inevitably lead to the exact center of the footprint.
Finding the anatomical center of the ligament footprint is no easy task, but it is the foundation for maximizing the function of the reconstructed ligament.
The plasma knife was cleaning the synovial membrane and remnants of the ligament in the intercondylar notch. There was a pleasing dripping sound, vaporized bubbles, and the yellow traces left by high energy ablation.
The plasma knife, also known as radiofrequency ablation technology, is a revolutionary tool for arthroscopy. This device doesn’t use heat to cut, but a low-temperature decomposition technology. It uses a strong radio frequency electric field in an electrolyte solution to break the molecular bonds of the target material, causing it to disintegrate and vaporize into simple molecules or atoms. The working temperature is 40-70 degrees Celsius, which is much superior to the high temperatures of lasers. Because of its low working temperature, it is also called a low-temperature plasma knife.
“I’ve distinguished the specificity of the footprint area using your method. Look, this is the tunnel entrance marked with the high-energy plasma knife. Isn’t the location correct?” Song Zimo was getting adept at operating the arthroscope after persisting with a two-hour daily regimen of practice.
Yang Ping stood up, came closer to the screen, and carefully observed the yellow dot, “This is perfect, it’s the anatomical center of the footprint.”
“I just visited Sisi again. Is Tang Fei tutoring her homework? That sounds tough!” Yang Ping mentioned casually.
Tang Fei was stitching the tendon: “Because of her illness, she’s unable to go to school and has been self-learning. I just take an hour out of my afternoon every day to tutor her. The child is very intelligent, with a high IQ.”
“She solves a three-layer Rubik’s Cube in thirteen seconds, really a genius.” Song Zimo said.
The Rubik’s Cube recovery, especially the three-layer one, is not easy to break the fifteen-second mark without talent, no matter how much practice one has. Yet this child managed to do it in thirteen seconds, a professional 8-dan level. That meant Song Zimo was even faster, over thirteen seconds, already at the professional 9-dan level. With just a little more practice, he would be ready to participate in the international competition.
Song Zimo was creating the tunnel swiftly. Yang Ping led the way, while he followed. That allowed the operation level to improve quickly.
The group of them chatted and operated. The surgery was progressing smoothly, and soon the grafting of the tendon was completed. Song Zimo extended and flexed the knee joint, examining under the scope whether the newly reconstructed ACL was impinging on the intercondylar notch or the posterior cruciate ligament.