Chapter 63 - Parasites In The Biliary Tract (1/2)

The doctors in Xinglin Garden understood everything that had been done up to this point.

It did not matter if they could perform the exact same procedures, but it would be humiliating if it had all been Greek to them.

Doctors who had received professional training still possessed this basic quality, at least.

‘It’s time to extract the gallstones.’ Everyone had the same thought on their minds. Since the common bile duct had been incised, the next step would be gallstone extraction to alleviate the patient’s obstructive jaundice symptoms.

A pair of custom-made lithotomy forceps, a conventional but rarely-used instrument in the operating theater, was then placed in Zheng Ren’s extended palm. Xie Yiren had been attentively observing Zheng Ren’s movements and necessary instruments would be handed over whenever required.

Many viewers in the Xinglin Garden live broadcast room were envious.

The host surgeon’s scrub nurse was competent and far better than their own. Not only were theirs bad-tempered, they even needed to be reminded to pa.s.s the lithotomy forceps during unconventional surgical manipulation.

In most cases, they would realize that they had not prepared the lithotomy forceps and circulating nurses would be instructed to retrieve a pack of sterile lithotomy forceps from the sterilization room.

Inevitably, this trip would delay the surgery for a few minutes, but this was not the case for the host surgeon, who could perform the operation in a relaxed manner.

There was a more outrageous possibility—that the nurses returned with a pair of unsterilized lithotomy forceps! That was a nightmare!

Despite the doctors’ envy, life still had to go on, right?

The forceps entered the common bile duct. One, two, three… Something was wrong. Why were the gallstones oddly shaped? Was it possible that those were not stones?

[Based on my decades of clinical experience, it seems like a biliary parasite.]

[Decades of clinical experience, are you bullsh*tting me? I don’t even think experienced, elderly senior consultants know how to log into Xinglin Garden.]

[I’m now fifty-nine years old, so I’m actually a senior consultant with decades of experience who keeps up with the times. What are you going to do about it?]

The subject in the Xinglin Garden live broadcast room changed in that instant.

However, judging by the strange shapes that emerged, they did not seem to be ordinary gallstones.

After removing the gallstones in the cystic duct and left and right hepatic ducts, the host surgeon began irrigating the ducts with warm normal saline while aspirating more sediment-like stones.

Then, a rare event occurred—the surgery came to a halt.

[Mayday, mayday. Did the live broadcast just crash? Anyone who sees this comment, please respond. I repeat, please respond.]

[Same. I feel so much better after seeing your comment.]

[It isn’t a crash. The host surgeon is preparing the next equipment. I’m guessing a choledochoscope.]

After ensuring that there was no connection issue or livestream problem, this particularly uncommon surgery having an interlude was instantly barraged with comments.

All of them were guessing what had actually happened.

[I think the host surgeon is having diarrhea. I once suffered from acute enteritis and had to visit the toilet eight times while performing an appendectomy. Every time after I scrubbed up and changed into a surgical gown, diarrhea struck me again. That was indeed a tragic experience and makes me feel uneasy even until now. I’m looking for consolation.]

[Perhaps he wants to check if there is any malignant transformation after opening the gallbladder.]

[Maybe the host surgeon fainted.]

Hundreds of comments flooded the screen, which reflected the joyful atmosphere of the moment, but none of them worried about the surgery at all.

What a joke. Disregarding everything else, the blunt dissection and profound anatomical knowledge of the host surgeon were more than enough to fuel speculations that they were an elderly professor in their sixties. How was it possible that they could not complete a tier-three surgery?

In the operating theater, Zheng Ren had temporarily stopped the surgery to allow Chu Yanzhi to unpack the equipment he had purchased in the System, place the fiberscope on the surgical instrument table and put the connector on Zheng Ren. That way, he could see the operative field through the imaging in the fiberscope with his naked eyes.

Chu Yanzhi’s height was the same as Zheng Ren’s—172 centimeters. Therefore, she had to use a stool in order to put the connector on Zheng Ren’s head.

“Chief Zheng, where did you get this equipment?” Chu Yanzhi had a.s.sisted in similar surgeries in West China Hospital but had never seen such tools.

“I made it myself.” Zheng Ren shut down the whole conversation with a simple sentence.

“What a stingy person,” Chu Yanzhi said, annoyed, “I’m not going to take it from you, so why can’t you tell me?”

Zheng Ren felt helpless. He could not possibly tell her that he bought it from the System’s Shop, and perfunctorily made-up a place was not a viable option either. What would happen if she decided to visit it for equipment purchase? Deception was a better course of action in this case.