Chapter 310 - Take off her high heels (2/2)

“It’s not easy for basketball players to make money.” Li Liang separated the big toe, which had been rather difficult to do with how thick it was—it was about as thick as a two-year-old child’s wrist.

“Nobody has it easy. Who actually has it easy in life?” interjected the anesthesiologist.

The surgery began as Zhang Fan used a small scalpel to gently open up the skin. This scalpel was incredibly sharp. In the early days, scalpels would be reused many times, but modern-day scalpels were single-use only. Although the modern scalpels were really sharp, they had low durability as they would become dull after being used to cut through skin just a few times.

“For this surgery, it’s really important to decrease damage to the blood supply system. His injury has already damaged a large portion of the vascular bed. In order to allow him to continue vigorously exercising in the future, it will be necessary to preserve what’s left of the blood supply system,” Zhang Fan explained while gently avoiding the dorsal artery and using the scalpel handle to separate the flexor hallucis brevis.

In surgery, not all exposed areas would require a scalpel. For instance, the skin required a scalpel to be as sharp as possible, but in the muscle layers, the surgeon would usually use either their fingers or the scalpel handle for separation. Muscles would be even more important for professional athletes. It would indeed be possible for muscles to recover after being cut with a sharp object, but that would form scar tissue which would permanently affect power output and stamina afterwards.

This was why functional joint surgeries for professional athletes were so hard to perform. If a normal person had such a joint injury, the surgeon would only need to restore functionality, correct the distortion, and eliminate the patient’s pain since that person wouldn’t need to push themselves to the very limit with vigorous exercise. As for some unimportant blood vessels? The surgeon would ligate whatever was possible without needing to pay special attention to the joint capsule. It would be alright to let things heal with scar tissue.

However, if a surgeon gave a professional athlete the same treatment, although this would indeed remove their pain, it would also end their career as a professional athlete. This was why many professional teams would have their personal team orthopedic joints surgeons. Top-level orthopedic joints surgeons would be capable of damaging the body minimally while helping the joint recover.

While Zhang Fan had only opened up Level 1 microsurgery courses in his System, which only taught him slightly more than half of the different types of microsurgery, Zhang Fan was far too much of a grinder who had already practiced the available surgery types countless times in his System already. He already had a 3-D mental image of the metatarsophalangeal joints mapped out in his mind.

Zhang Fan slowly separated the inflamed metatarsal tissue with his forceps and rinsed with saline solution. This surgery wasn’t particularly dangerous, but had a very high requirement for the surgeon’s knowledge of joints and precise movements.

In surgery, movements needed to be as few as possible. For instance, when in the joint capsule, a curette could only be used once to clean out the inflamed tissue as a second time would cause even more damage. This would be a complete test of a surgeon’s overall ability in how well they could manage their movements.

Zhang Fan began the repairs after cleaning out the inflamed tissue. Such exquisite repairs would be impossible for ordinary doctors, along with being unnecessary. However, this would be really necessary for the professional athletes. In America, there were less than 20 top-level orthopedic joint surgeons. Moreover, the doctor’s getting slightly older would make it impossible for them to perform such a surgery anymore, so the surgery fee was also really expensive.

“Doctor Zhang, why are you moving diagonally for this repair?” Li Liang didn’t understand, since the physiological position shouldn’t have been diagonal. However, Zhang Fan didn’t respond, as this was the most critical moment of the surgery which would determine its success or failure.

Zhang Fan held his breath as he did his very best to steady his hands while gently repairing. He made four movements in succession before he finally heaved a long sigh of relief! He had finally managed to repair the distorted and scarred muscle.

More than three hours had passed since the start of the surgery. This was how precision surgeries were; they really took a lot of time.

Zhang Fan waited for his breathing to calm down before he told Li Liang, “The diagonal movements are a consideration for his weight and job, that will make things more solid.”

“Oh!” Li Liang was still rather confused even with Zhang Fan’s explanation as he hadn’t performed enough surgeries to understand this.

“Electric drill, Kirshner wires,” Zhang Fan told the medical equipment nurse. Meanwhile, Song Bing was incredibly bored. This entire surgery had been performed under the microscope, so he couldn’t see anything at all. Zhang Fan opened up small holes with the electric drill and used the Kirshner wires to solidly affix the joint.

“Create a cast. The cast must be maintained for four weeks. Even one day less won’t do,” Zhang Fan informed Li Liang and Song Bing.

“Alright!” The surgery thus ended. Mrs. Wang and the black basketball player’s black friends had almost fallen asleep waiting outside the operating room! When Zhang Fan and the others spent a great deal of effort to somehow push the black basketball player out of the operating room, his black friends surrounded him happily and kept chatting in English. Even though Zhang Fan had learned English for quite a while, he still couldn’t understand what they said!

“Doctor Zhang, thank you for your hard work.” Mrs. Wang was looking expectantly at Zhang Fan.

He knew what she meant as he removed his surgical mask and smiled. “The damage was rather severe, but it’s all been repaired successfully. The rest will depend on his own body’s recovery. We’ll know more after four weeks. He should be able to start playing basketball again in the future.” Zhang Fan hadn’t dared to guarantee anything before the surgery, but things were different now that the surgery was over.

He was simply that confident in himself because of all the hard work and sweat that he had put in through his System!