Chapter 104: Beautiful Scars

It had been a while since Ling Ran received a Basic Treasure Chest courtesy of a Sincere Gratitude. Before this, Ling Ran had only received Sincere Gratitude when his superiors were with him.

On the surface, Ling Ran only got the Basic Treasure Chests courtesy of Sincere Gratitude because his superiors praised him, and that was how the patients learned that their surgeries were extremely successful.

Ever since he started to perform surgeries using the M-Tang technique, even though he had a lot of new patients, none of them had left the hospital yet.

The recovery time for the suturing of a flexor tendon was long. In the beginning, even the superiors could not tell for sure what the final result was like, let alone the patients.

Ling Ran naturally did not receive any Sincere Gratitude as he made ward rounds together with his superior… so he could not help but become deep in thought after suddenly receiving a Basic Treasure Chest.

He had already receive Sincere Gratitude from the patient in front of him even though it was not time for the patient to be discharged yet. As he thought carefully about it, whenever he received Sincere Gratitude before this, it was also not yet time for the patients to be discharged.

‘So… is it simply because I’ve been making fewer ward rounds lately?’

Ling Ran could not help but become very contemplative and started internally criticizing himself. ‘I got carried away by the mission to practice the M-Tang technique. To increase my surgical volume, I left the task of making ward rounds entirely to Lu Wenbin. I really shouldn’t have done that. Even though ordinary attending physicians also leave the task of making ward rounds to resident doctors, am I an attending physician now? Why would I compare myself to ordinary attending physicians?’ Ling Ran scratched his chin and continued his pondering.

This time, he did not obtain Sincere Gratitude courtesy of his superior’s praise. The fact that he obtained the reward the moment he saw the patient also explained the problem quite a bit.

First of all, it was very much possible that he could only obtain Sincere Gratitude when meeting the patients face-to-face. Next, the importance of being praised by his boss could not be negated because of this.

“Doctor Ling, is my hand not recovering properly?” The patient had been toying with the jujubes for so long that they were almost squashed. He could not help but feel rather diffident because Ling Ran had not responded yet.

“What do you think about your own recovery?” Ling Ran continued to ask as he wanted to understand more about the mechanism behind the appearance of Sincere Gratitude.

The patient got even more anxious and said, “Why do you sound like a teacher who is asking how a student did in his exams?”

Ling Ran froze for a moment and said with a smile, “I’ll only know for sure after another hand function analysis, but judging from the movements you did just now, there shouldn’t be any huge problems.”

The patient immediately breathed a sigh of relief. He quickly said, “That’s good then, that’s good… Oh my! Did you know that you really scared me just now? By the way, a hand function analysis was already carried out on my hand, I got a ‘good’ in the results.”

“How about your grip? Were you able to exert force?”

“Yes. I could already carry a twenty-pound box.” The patient placed the jujubes—which he had toyed with for a long time—on the table.

The moment he said that, Ling Ran immediately joined the dots and said, “You are Wang Zhi, aren’t you? Forty-six years old. The Zone II flexor tendons of your index finger and middle finger were pierced when you helped install a piece of glass at home. I read your rehabilitation report from last week.”

Even though he had not seen Wang Zhi much, he had read his medical report many times.

“Yes, yes, yes. That’s me, alright,” said Wang Zhi happily, “It seems that you remember me. Thanks for suturing my wound so well. I’ve asked other people, everyone said that I’m truly lucky for my hand to recover so quickly, and for my hand function to recover so well.”

Ling Ran smiled and said nothing. Even though Wang Zhi’s injury was considered minor in Yun Hua Hospital, nothing was certain when it came to medical matters; the fact that an injury was minor did not guarantee a perfect recovery.

Wang Zhi was indeed quite lucky if one were to look at it from this perspective. Wang Zhi might also have scored a ‘good’ if his wound had been sutured by another doctor, but it would be difficult for him to recover so quickly. Besides, different evaluation methods had different definitions of ‘good’. For example, the requirements of STEF often used by the Japanese were much higher. Different evaluation methods also focused on different things.

Wang Zhi’s hand function was almost completely recovered. Ling Ran estimated that he would obtain scores that were in the highest ranges, whether the hand function analysis or STEF was used on him. It was only natural that Wang Zhi was overjoyed.

When it came to hand surgeries (or more accurately, surgeries performed on flexor tendons), the patients themselves and their family members were wholly capable of telling whether the recovery was going well.

It was unlike heart surgeries where people were hesitant about the results even after a cardiography was carried out. It was even more unlike craniocerebral surgeries where even the doctors did not know how to interpret the MRI scans. Naturally, the family members themselves would much less be able to make accurate judgements.

After the Hand Surgery Department completed a surgery, there would be obvious differences starting from the day the patient began their rehabilitation.

The worst case scenario would be when the blood vessels were not sutured properly, causing a lack of blood supply, and resulting in necrosis and amputation.

Doctors also tried their best to prevent cases where hand function was lost even though the wound was sutured. Countries like Japan and the United States—where surgeons were valuable—were even more unwilling to waste time on fingers that had lost their functions.

The most common cases were those where hand function was partially recovered. Patients who could extend but not flex their fingers, and who could move their fingers but not pinch them together, could not be said to have recovered well.

As for those who did recover well, the patients and their family members did not even need to hear what the doctors said. They would get the idea just by comparing the patient’s current state to their usual state in the past.

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“Let me take a look at your hand.” Ling Ran sat across from Wang Zhi, held his hand, and did a few simple tests.

The few patients beside them were also paying attention to Wang Zhi’s situation while carrying out their own rehabilitation exercises.

Ling Ran gave a definite answer. “It seems that your hand has recovered. We can already arrange for you to be discharged.”

“Is that so? This hand of mine has recovered and there wouldn’t be a relapse, right?” Wang Zhi was extremely happy.

Ling Ran nodded with certainty.

“This is amazing, amazing!” Wang Zhi grabbed Ling Ran’s hand, shook it a few times with force, and said, “Did you know that I’ve been so worried about this hand of mine lately? I’m an accountant for a company in the private sector and never felt that I needed to be precise with my hands. I only knew how important my hands were after I got injured.”

Wang Zhi said, feeling a little emotional, “The other day, I was thinking about how, if I can’t recover my right hand function completely, I’ll encounter problems not only in writing, but also in typing. Even if I recover to some degree but still can’t use my hand normally, it’ll also affect my job. For accountants like us, there is a period of time every year when we are especially busy. Everyone would be swamped with work. If I were to burden everyone because of my hand, it would be really troublesome…”

Ling Ran listened with a smile. He did not like to interrupt other people. Moreover, he did not really have anything to do right now. The other patients also took the opportunity to ask Ling Ran to look at their hands.

The process of rehabilitation was a very boring one. Other than that, recovery was nonlinear. After carrying out rehabilitation to a certain degree, many patients would get very anxious if there was no short-term improvement.

Right now, Ling Ran’s identity as a doctor had a comforting effect on everyone.

At this moment, a nurse from the Rehabilitation Center came over. When she saw that Ling Ran was carrying out tests on the patients, she said with a smile, “You guys are lucky. Your incisions were closed by Doctor Ling, right? The wounds sutured by him are beautiful.”

After Ling Ran’s surgical volume increased, he often left the task of closing the incisions to either Lu Wenbin or Ma Yanlin. The patients who were doing rehabilitation exercises right now were some of Ling Ran’s earliest patients, and it was almost time for them to be discharged.

All the patients who were currently doing rehabilitation exercises were men, and they had obviously not paid any attention to this matter yet. All of them started looking at their wounds.

When the nurse saw that Ling Ran was there, she took the initiative to lavish praise on Ling Ran, “The standard of the sutures made by Doctor Ling has been widely acknowledged in our hospital. Aren’t there pictures of the scars of previous patients after they were sutured? You guys will know after comparing your scars with theirs that the sutures made by Doctor Ling are practically works of art. It was very rare for you guys to be sutured by him.”

The men did not especially care if their hands looked good, but all of them were rather curious and went to look for the self-made booklet in the corner of the room.

The Rehabilitation Center always had a tradition of taking pictures for their records. They compiled into a booklet pictures of a few patients’ wounds that had recovered well. Apart from promoting themselves, the booklet also served as encouragement for future patients.

The grown men surrounded the booklet that looked like a magazine and flipped through it page by page. When they compared the wounds in the pictures with their own wounds, they really did spot plenty of similarities and differences.

“This one really was sutured quite crudely.”

“With such a big scar on the back of his hand, people will be staring at him when he goes out.”

“How is it possible for there to be such a disgusting scar? It doesn’t even look like a human hand anymore.”

Even though the cases chosen by the Rehabilitation Center were of those who recovered relatively well, their incisions might not have been sutured beautifully. When it came to this, many doctors had a different opinion compared to Ling Ran.

The Hand Surgery Department was a traditional department, and all its traditional, higher-ranking doctors were over fifty years old. Department Associate Director Pan was promoted as an exception, because he was known to be young and promising in the Hand Surgery Department.

As for the older doctors, even though it was important whether the wound was sutured well, the completeness of the limbs also needed to be considered; the surface area of the scars caused by the suture and whether the scars looked good did not need consideration at all.

How could Ling Ran stand this!

If he could not completely bring both sides of the skin together when closing an incision, he would feel upset and unhappy. As for cases where the stitches were curved, the angle of the incisions were tricky to work with, and the spaces between the stitches were uneven. He could not stand it at all.

For the surgeries Ling Ran performed later, it was out of sight, out of mind for him as Lu Wenbin and the others bandaged the patients’ wounds after closing the incisions. But no matter how you looked at those incisions which Ling Ran closed himself, the scars looked very beautiful.

The nurses in the Rehabilitation Center had a high degree of sensitivity towards scars because they see them everyday.

Even though Ling Ran himself did not notice this detail—even the patients were not aware of it—the young nurses had been talking about this among themselves.

Details like which doctors closed incisions beautifully, which doctors had patients with good prognoses, which doctor’s patients experienced pain and infection easily, and all the details that the patients did not understand and the doctors were not aware of were all clear to the nurses.

*Ding! Ding! Ding!*

Ling Ran received three more Basic Treasure Chests courtesy of the patients’ Sincere Gratitude.