Duan Lixuan was pushed to clear the wound, and Chen Xinan went to the duty room to take a shower. This was his fourth surgery of the day. No, maybe it's not today anymore - the needle is already pointing to 3.30am.
In neurosurgery, it's either the brain or the spinal cord. Four or five hours is normal, ten hours is not uncommon. And the surgeon's hands don't stop for a moment during this period.
The right hand usually holds a pair of sharp-tipped pliers, scissors, or probes of various sizes. The pliers are called "bipolar" (electric knives) and coagulate tiny blood vessels; the scissors are called "microscopic scissors" and are responsible for snipping off blood vessels and tissues; and the probes are called "nerve strippers" and are used to strip the surrounding tissue and expose the nerve.
In the left hand, a metal tube called an aspirator is held throughout the procedure. There is a slit in the suction device, the length of which can be covered with the thumb to adjust the amount of suction.
The right hand has an opening to change instruments, while the left hand is in the same position the whole time. Sometimes you have to wrestle with your left hand to spread it out during an operation. Yao Guangping, Chen Xinan's team leader, has developed frozen shoulder because of years of clinical life, and can no longer raise his left arm.
It's a life of no quality at all. With research, surgery, outpatient clinics, and administrative rounds, spaced out to deal with sensitive doctor-patient relationships, there is no private time at all. Without a natural anti-stress gene and a penchant for adventure, people can easily be driven crazy by these days. Luckily, Chen Xinan was a pervert by nature and had academic achievements, thus securing a certain status and salary.
But for most of the small doctors, the days were much more miserable.
Residents ate and lived in the hospital and were on call 24 hours a day. They are solely responsible for the day-to-day management and testing of patients, and have endless medical records to write every day.
Below the residents, there is an even more miserable group of trainees.
Most of them are medical students who have graduated from undergraduate programmes. Although they work in the hospital, they are not considered employees and do not receive much pay. The training students in the second hospital, a month's income is only 1100 yuan. What they do is mostly writing medical history, arranging cases, pushing beds, sterilising, collecting specimens, running errands and other miscellaneous work. Only after three years can they get a training certificate and officially become a doctor.
Before that, they are cheap cows and horses, and are the key targets of exploitation by hospitals.
It is true that the duty of hospitals is to save lives and help people. But it is not a public welfare organisation and it is burdened with the pressure to make profits. If a public hospital is not allowed to make money, then it will close down like a company. But when profit-making becomes an important purpose of hospitals, many things will deviate from the original purpose of saving lives and helping the sick. Excessive medical care, illegal fees, pressure on training, kickbacks from companies after tenders...
In short, hospitals are places of hope. But at the same time, it is also a chaotic quagmire, a human amplifier, and a cruel field of fame and fortune. What it brings to doctors is not only physical exploitation, but also mental torture. After a day, apart from the gurgling protests of the intestines, there was only the exhaustion that soaked through the bone marrow.
Chen Xinan casually rubbed his hair twice and drank half a bottle of glucose. He went back to the locker room and rummaged through a set of brushing clothes, and also made a point of checking whether the trouser string was there or not. After all, the next surgery was very significant, and he didn't want to break his stand just to hang up his trousers.
He changed into his new scrubs and had just taken two steps when he experienced a sense of free-flying wanderlust.
Looking down, he found a large opening inside his leg, and the little lezzie was hidden from view. He went back and rummaged through the pile of piss rings and found that the rest were either untied or torn into wisps. This kind of cotton cloth is brittle like toilet paper after being sterilised at high temperatures a few times.
Chen Xinan pulled out a stapler from the locker. Take a mobile phone to cross the legs and shine, even stapled five pins, only barely hide the first leak of spring light.
In fact, to wear a pair of autumn trousers, and then wear a pair of underwear, is not so miserable. Not Chen Xinan do not want to, really because "can not afford to wear".
All sections within, not a single surgery was clean. Ascites, pus and blood, amniotic fluid, and even faeces and urine could spew out. And with the operating table positioned right at the doctor's waist, the waist and abdomen naturally become the worst hit by contamination.
In TV dramas, doctors wear disposable waterproof surgical gowns. But in reality, most hospitals are still using sheep surgical gowns, which are not waterproof at all.
There is no way, after all, surgical gowns are not charged to the patient, counting the hospital's input costs. And the hospital budget is limited, the money has to be spent on the face.
Chen Xinan nailed the trousers, the chest can not help but float a few points of sadness, and went to dazzle two mouthfuls of glucose. Tied his bandana in front of the mirror, and used tape to firmly attach the mask to his face, so that the water vapour from breathing did not stain the lenses.
When he was ready, he walked into the scrub area in front of the operating theatre. This is where the surgeon washes his hands, with only a sink and stainless steel storage racks. Two water-stained, arat-coloured taps resembled faded crutch candy.
He stepped on the switch and carefully scrubbed his forearms. After a full fifteen minutes of washing, he entered the operating theatre with his hands up. The assistant helped him into his scrubs, and he walked to the table wearing gloves.
Duan Lixuan was lying on his back on the operating table, his head clamped in a triple-spiked head frame. His hair and beard were shaved off, and the tiny wounds were cleared. The brain was coated with orange iodine, like a tattered grapefruit. A breathing tube was inserted into his mouth and his eyelids were taped shut. A green sterile cloth was propped above the head, with a small square window open to reveal the part that needed to be drilled open.
Like many chefs who don't prepare their own food, a surgery is not always done by the lead surgeon. Most of the time, a junior surgeon will cut what needs to be cut and expose what needs to be exposed. It's then that the lead surgeon paces over with small square steps, glances up to the table, and raises his chin-chin, 'Cut.' After the cut, fluttering away, the rest of the finishing stitches are completed by subordinate doctors.
But today, Chen Xinan operated the whole process, and the team was also simple.
The chief surgeon (him), the assistant, the instrument nurse, the circuit nurse, the anaesthetist, the anaesthesia care. Just these six people.
He sat silently in front of Duan Lixuan's head and cut through the scalp and periosteum. The movement was silky smooth, as if he wasn't cutting the skin but opening a zip.
A few holes were drilled in the skull, then the milling cutter was inserted into the holes and the bone flap was cut off. Carefully removing the skull, he cuts through the taut dura mater.
Just as a small cut was made, blood sprayed out from around the scissors and splattered over his shoulder. He stopped and waited for the brain to automatically arch the bruise out.
Duan Lixuan's head was disassembled like this. It was exposed to the air like a large simulated toy.
After cleaning up the edges of the wound, Chen Xinan held a long chopstick-like endoscope and slowly reached into the bone window.
The world under the microscope is the battlefield of the extra-muscular doctors. This is the place where the real misses are not even close, and every step needs to be taken carefully.
Chen Xinan's eyes were fixed on the projection on the screen, and his breathing became slower and slower. Everything around him gradually moved backwards until it all withdrew from his consciousness. The electric knife made a buzzing sound, and a mist of steaming water wafted through the air.
'Attract (blood).'
'(Stop the bleeding) gauze.'
"Do another blood gas (analysis). Is there any acid (poisoning)?"
'The (shadowless) lamp is adjusted.'
After twenty minutes or so, he located the injured vein and quickly coagulated it with an electric knife. The brain tissue re-relaxed and intracranial pressure returned to normal. He withdrew the endoscope and held out his hand, 'Line.'
These commands were so concise, so succinct that they were icy cold. Yet only Chen Xinan himself knew how much psychological pressure he was under at the moment.
Although he was calm on a daily basis, it did not mean that he had no emotions. He just made the subject separation - whether it was good or bad, it was someone else's. Other people's emotions, he didn't have to receive them. Other people's fate, he didn't care much about.
It may be a bit cruel to put it that way. But for the patient, a doctor can just heal, even if he is cold and heartless.
But at the same time, Chen Xinan is also a human being and has his warm side: he likes small animals, loves his parents, and falls in love with someone at first sight. Not to mention the fact that at this moment, he is picking the brains of others.
The brain is the most sophisticated organ in the human body. A slight deviation, even just 1 millimetre, can have serious consequences. Paralysis, dementia, aphasia, atresia... in short, as long as a person didn't die, the God's Outsider doctors always had a way to make life worse than death.
The extreme pressure was literally crushing him, his entire skull was wooden. He had never cared so much about the end of a surgery that he couldn't swim through every step.
But he was the second-line duty doctor tonight, and he couldn't run away from the battle. Otherwise what awaited Duan Lixuan was either death or paralysis.
He could only push the emotional clutch all the way to the bottom, forcing the human part of himself to completely detach from the doctor part.
After two and a half hours, the surgery was over. Chen Xinan sat on the floor to rest, his head leaning against the wall. Beside him lay yellow medical waste bags, neatly arranged with blood-soaked gauze, cotton pads, gauze strips, needles and threads, and other consumables. The travelling nurse is carefully counting the quantity.
He was too tired to take off his gloves. But his eyes never closed, but kept looking at Duan Lixuan's direction.
Because there was no consecutive surgery, Duan Lixuan was resuscitated on the stage. Half an hour later, his values stabilised. One and a half hours later, independent breathing was restored. The intubation was successfully removed, and the bilateral pupils returned to normal size.
Chen Xinan finally removed his gloves. Tried to stand up, but couldn't. He was like a newborn lamb, half crawling, half kneeling to reach Duan Lixuan's hand. Exhaustedly, he gasped and smiled gently at the same time, "It's okay. Come on, pinch it."
The operating theatre was cold, and Duan Lixuan's hand was also cold. However, it was very powerful when it pinched Chen Xinan's tiger's mouth.