Chapter 126: The P of VIP
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu
Zhang Fan’s patients gradually increased in number in the urology department. The other attending physicians didn’t try to steal his patients, as Zhang Fan had already shown off his skills. Lu Shuyan was a great help to Zhang Fan. He would have needed to do far too much and work overnight every single day if he’d been all by himself.
Zhang Jingshu had nothing to do during the days. She was really bored waiting by herself while Zhang Fan and Shao Hua went to work. Zhang Fan thus signed his younger sister up for driving school so that she could obtain a driver’s license afterwards. It felt like cars had suddenly increased in number in Chasu City over the past year. He felt that driving was a useful skill in life that his sister should learn early on, especially when she had nothing to do right now.
At night, whenever Zhang Fan wasn’t working a night shift, he would take Shao Hua and Jingshu to find restaurants which had delicious food. Jingshu truly was such a foodie. She enjoyed eating pit meat and barbequed mutton so much that her mouth was slathered in grease. Zhang Fan and Shao Hua were unable to eat as much meat as her. Jingshu didn’t even mind how hot it was in summer as she ate all the meat she could.
The urology department received a patient with a kidney stone problem. Dr. Heimduller and his vice director superior performed a successful renal lithotripsy for this patient. It was now the last day for the patient’s hospitalization before being discharged, but a medical incident occurred on the last night at 3:00 a.m. before he was supposed to leave the hospital.
Zhang Fan and Lu Shuyan were both working the night shift together on this night. Since they had more patients now for their medical team, Lu Shuyan also had to start working night shifts to finish writing all the medical reports, but it was always so late by the time she finished her work that she would simply sleep in the nurses’ resting area.
Since it was 3:00 a.m., it was quite normal for everyone to be asleep. Zhang Fan and Lu Shuyan had both gone to sleep just a little while ago. They had so many patients now that it was a lot of work to finish all the patients’ paperwork, medical reports, changing the patients’ medicine, and so on by themselves. They also had two surgeries scheduled for the morning.
Right after they fell asleep, a nurse knocked and woke both of them up. “Doctor Zhang, hurry and check on patient #15! His urine contains a significant amount of blood!” Zhang Fan hurriedly put on his doctor’s coat and left the doctors’ resting area.
Patient #15 was a man in his mid-thirties, and Dr. Heimduller’s kidney stone patient. Zhang Fan hurriedly arrived and saw that there was already more than 300 mL of the patient’s blood in a basin. Since this patient wasn’t Zhang Fan’s patient, he didn’t know the patient’s specific circumstances. Zhang Fan hurriedly performed a basic checkup, and then swiftly read the patient’s medical information next to the patient’s bed.
‘This is bad,’ Zhang Fan thought to himself. ‘There’s internal bleeding in his kidney. It’s likely that a blood vessel ruptured inside the kidney.’
“Hurry and phone Dr. Heimduller! Tell him that patient #15 is urinating blood,” Zhang Fan told Lu Shuyan. He then informed patient #15’s wife who had been staying by the patient’s side about the situation. “Don’t worry. My diagnosis is that a blood vessel has ruptured. This requires emergency surgery. I will prepare the paperwork right now. I need you to sign it for the surgery.”
The patient’s wife’s face had gone incredibly pale after seeing how much blood her husband was urinating. She stood there completely still, not knowing what to do. Her lips were trembling severely.
Zhang Fan left the patient’s room, and told the nurse, “Fluid infusion! The patient needs hemostatic medicine. Add it to the medical report.”
Zhang Fan then called the director of the medical imaging department. Although there wasn’t a high amount of bleeding, internal bleeding in the kidney couldn’t be resolved through medication alone. Interventional embolization would be required.
The medical imaging director was also one of the directors who lived in an apartment on the hospital grounds, so he would be able to swiftly arrive. After Zhang Fan phoned the director, he then felt that he had made a mistake, and hurriedly phoned Vice Director Wang Zongkui. Whenever a patient had a medical incident, the proper protocol would have been to first report it to the higher-ranking doctor in the same department. Zhang Fan directly calling the medical imaging director was slightly improper.
When Wang Zongkui heard what was going on, he hurriedly said, “Immediately call the medical imaging director and have interventional embolization prepared. I’ll be there soon. You should start on the preparations for the surgery.”
Dr. Heimduller lived slightly farther away than the directors, but also managed to arrive at the same time as Wang Zongkui. Zhang Fan and Lu Shuyan had already finished the pre-surgery preparations at this time.
Dr. Heimduller and Vice Director Wang were both able to instantly tell that Zhang Fan’s initial diagnosis had been correct. It was likely that a small blood vessel in the patient’s kidney had ruptured.
“The medical imaging director just called, saying that they finished preparing for interventional embolization! He told us to bring the patient over,” the nurse on duty informed the doctors.
“Alright, let’s bring the patient over. All the necessary paperwork for the surgery has already been signed. Lu Shuyan, you stay here on duty in the urology department. We’re going over there with the patient,” Vice Director Wang said, and then went back home to go and sleep. With subordinate doctors and nurses watching over everything, he wasn’t very worried.
In the hospital’s intervention room, Heimduller was really impressed with and grateful to Zhang Fan. Heimduller had actually met with a similar situation back when he first joined the urology department. At the time, he mistakenly believed that his patient was only having some simple bleeding, and didn’t pay it much mind, but that patient ended up going into shock, and almost died if not for immediate treatment.
“Thank you so much, Brother Zhang.”
Although this was something that Zhang Fan was supposed to do, he dealt with it in a timely manner, made the phone calls to all the correct people such as the higher-ranked doctor and the relevant medical department, along with dealing with all the necessary surgery paperwork. Everything had been done properly and well.
“It’s nothing. No need to be so polite with me. It’s what I should do. Still, you managed to arrive so quickly.”
“Sigh! I really should learn how to drive and buy a car. It really is so difficult to get here in the middle of the night. I waited for so long before I finally managed to hail a taxi. I also rushed the driver so much that he got angry!”
The kidney stone patient was alright. Since the bleeding had been discovered in a timely manner, the emergency surgery was successful. Over the next few days, Zhang Fan slowly became a part of the urology department. The doctors here were all middle-aged men who hadn’t been happy with the favoritism that their director showed Zhang Fan, and Zhang Fan really was a bit too young. But, as time passed, everyone became more accepting of Zhang Fan due to his professionalism, skills, and being easy to get along with.
“Brother Zhang, this is for the hemostatic medicine (kickbacks). You used two bottles yesterday, so here’s 8 yuan for you.” Heimduller tried to give Zhang Fan some money, but Zhang Fan smiled wryly, and replied, “Brother, you’re really looking down on me here! Just keep that money. Why bother coming over just for this? That’s no good!”
“Sigh! It’s because I still don’t know you very well yet! ...Okay, I got it, I’ll treat you to some mutton in a few days when we’re both off from work.”
Although the urology department’s Director Li would always go out to his own clinic and for house calls after the daily department morning meeting as if he was completely unconcerned about his own department, actually, Director Li had assigned all the department’s managing duties to many people already.
The three vice directors and three attending physicians all had a share of the medicine and medical equipment fee kickbacks. This way, not only would Director Li have little work to do, the others wouldn’t be able to blame him for anything related to money. The other doctors would also keep an eye on each other this way!
Although this seemed quite nice, with Director Li having very little responsibility, perhaps it was precisely because of his personality that he was never going to have a rank higher than department director. Chinese medical society was truly so contradictory.
On Friday, Dr. Heimduller received a new patient who had severe hydronephrosis in his left kidney. Conservative treatment was already impossible for a kidney in such condition. The only and best possible treatment method was the surgical removal of the entire left kidney.
Normally, a patient who came in on a Friday would have to wait until Monday or Wednesday for the surgery. This was because there were many types of checkups that couldn’t be performed at the hospital on weekends. However, this patient had a distant relative who was a member of Chasu City Communist Party Committee. This patient was the classical type who wasn’t worried about anything at all before being unwell, but felt like something should be done as quickly as possible after learning about the problem. The patient’s distant relative counted as a minor government official.
Due to the minor government official’s connections, a section chief from the Bureau of Health ended up specially making a phone call to Director Li of the urology department. Basically, the message was that Director Li should hurry and perform the surgery right away over the weekend.
Normally, Director Li Jianguo would never prematurely perform a surgery. He felt that performing a surgery without even having completed all the necessary and proper checkups was nothing more than a joke! That would be highly risky, something that he would never do with his incredibly cautious personality. However, this Bureau of Health section chief did have some real authority, and was a candidate for promotion in the future. This was why Director Li made an exception and ordered his subordinate doctors to just do the few checkups they could.
Since this was at the urging of the director, Dr. Heimduller personally accompanied the patient for all the checkups. An attending physician like him ran around everywhere after the patient, sweating profusely as if he was a personal nurse. He had to personally ask the various departments to speed up the standard checkups to get the results as quickly as possible. However, there were some specialized checkups for which the results would take an entire day or more. It would be impossible to rush those!
Director Li Jianguo checked the results of the basic checkups for the patient. The patient’s vitals were all normal, and he had no chronic illnesses, nor was the patient’s age very high. Thus, Director Li said, “Let’s do this, then. Arrange this surgery for tomorrow morning. Dr. Heimduller and Dr. Zhang, come early in the morning for some overtime. Be my surgical assistants for this surgery.”
“Okay, Director,” Zhang Fan replied.