Chapter 246: Hungry for Knowledge

In Ling Jiezhou’s eyes, Ling Ran had sutured the patient steadily and quickly.

While in Miao Tansheng’s eyes, Ling Ran performed the heavy reinforcing suture and subcuticular suture so excellently that his skills way surpassed the standards of an ordinary doctor.

“Did you learn this in Yun Hua Hospital?” Doctor Miao carried a chair over and sat next to Ling Ran. He watched Ling Ran as the young man threaded the needle.

Ling Ran smiled without answering the question.

If he were to answer everyone’s question, he would have died of fatigue by now.

Ling Jiezhou was as happy as a lark. He said to Miao Tansheng, “My son has appeared in the news quite a few times. His name can be found in all the trending topics in WeChat’s Moments [1] and Weibo, such as ‘the most handsome doctor in China’, ‘the most handsome doctor in the world’, and ‘the doctor with the most superb skills’.”

“I don’t look at my Moments.” Miao Tansheng paused for a moment and said, “Neither do I look at my Weibo newsfeed nor read Jinri Toutiao [2] and the news.”

“Why? Doesn’t that make you a caveman?” Ling Jiezhou was baffled.

Unperturbed, Miao Tansheng said, “I won’t even have enough time to accumulate knowledge even if I completely wear myself out by making myself busy. Why would I have time to read those stuff?”

As he spoke, Miao Tansheng deliberately looked at Ling Ran.

Within every person lay a good teacher, and all teachers loved students who were hungry for knowledge.

Miao Tansheng believed that Ling Ran would definitely remember him if he acted like a person who poured all his energy into accumulating medical knowledge.

“I see you playing with your phone every day whenever there’s nothing to do.” Ling Jiezhou was not buying it at all. He then said, “You probably look at your Tik Tok [1] newsfeed all the time. Middle-aged men like Tik Tok the most. I don’t know why, but I see many middle-aged men in the alley looking at their Tik Tok newsfeed. How can they still enjoy such a thing at the age of forty or fifty?”

There was very few medical staff in the clinic, and whenever Ling Jiezhou played with his cell phone, he would make sure to look around. Most of the time, Miao Tansheng would also be playing with his phone. After all, there was a limit to how many patients Golden Deer Health Services could send to the clinic every day. Even though quite a number of patients went there on their own, not many of them needed debridement or suturing.

Miao Tansheng blushed violently when he heard that and quickly shook his head. “I’m always reading research papers on my phone. The music you hear is just my phone’s background music.”

“Doesn’t that count as playing with your phone too?”

“Hey, does reading research papers sound like playing to you?”

“As long as your phone is lit, it means that you’re playing with your phone. What difference is there between reading blog posts and reading research papers?” Long Jiezhou had always looked down on people like Miao Tansheng, who played with their phones just like other people but thought of themselves as classier phone users.

Miao Tansheng snorted a few times and watched Ling Ran work. He did not continue to argue with Ling Jiezhou.

There were still some basic skills when it came to secretly learning someone else’s craft. It was obviously not beneficial for him to argue with his teacher’s father.

Ling Ran continued to perform the subcuticular suture. He did not listen to the conversation between Ling Jiezhou and Miao Tansheng at all.

After a heavy reinforcing suture was carried out on the wound, the likelihood of the wound splitting due to pressure became a lot lower. Ling Ran then gently performed the subcuticular suture using a thin surgical thread. That way, scarring caused by the stitches could be minimized without affecting the strength of the stitches.

At the same time, Ling Ran was fully focused on aligning the skin on both edges of the wound.

Even though the probability of the wound splitting was already reduced, if the skin on both ends of the wound were not aligned, the resulting scar would be extremely hideous.

With aesthetics being the final aim, the loss of part of the cuticular border would be the source of even bigger trouble.

The young woman Ling Ran was treating had a wound at the corner of her eye, and there was a deficit of skin. Even though the deficit was not much, any person who valued beauty would not be able to live with the scar as a result of the interaction between newly-grown skin and the existing skin.

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The subcuticular heavy reinforcing suture was also useful for such situations.

Ling Ran first stitched together the two cuticular borders he had aligned earlier, leaving the part with skin deficit untouched. He then put down his needle holder and stood up. While he stretched his body, he said, “A stretch of your skin is missing. Later, I’ll pull your skin before I carry out the subcuticular heavy reinforcing suture so that both borders of your wound can be stitched together without any gap. That way, the resulting scar will be even smaller. But you’ll need to be very careful when you’re taking care of it.”

“All right.” All the young woman needed to hear was that the scar would be small.

As Doctor Miao lectured the young woman and complemented Ling Ran at the same time, he said, “What Doctor Ling is performing on you is an extremely top-tier suture technique. Don’t think that you can get this anywhere you want to. From what I know, there isn’t another doctor who can suture your wound like this in all of Yun Hua City.”

“Seriously?” The young woman did not quite believe it.

Doctor Miao chuckled and said, “How much money do you think a doctor, who can do this kind of surgery, makes every time he carries out plastic surgery? In short, you’re very fortunate to have encountered Doctor Ling this time.”

“Oh,” the young woman said in acknowledgment. She then immediately continued. “We agreed on the price earlier.”

“We’re not asking you to pay more.” Doctor Miao twitched his lips and thought about how young women nowadays were getting more and more sensitive about money.

Ling Ran carried out the subcuticular heavy reinforcing suture on the young woman once again using a thin surgical thread. The aim this time was to promote a mechanical creep [4]. Research showed that when certain tension was applied to edges of wounds, the surface of the skin tissue would increase as a result of a mechanical creep. The skin’s collagen fibers would also realign in a manner parallel to each other and extend outwards. Hence, there could theoretically be an increase of up to 31% of the skin’s surface area.

As a result, the skin deficit could be compensated. Its effect was also much better compared to skin grafting.

Of course, if the area of skin deficit was too large, skin grafting would be the only choice.

While Doctor Miao carefully watched Ling Ran work, and earnestly digested what was going on, he contemplated the matter.

Both the heavy reinforcing suture technique and subcuticular suture technique were categorized as “intelligent skills”.

Intelligent skills required doctors to be versatile and adaptable. It was especially true for the heavy reinforcing suture technique, in which a doctor had to think about the location where tension needed to be reduced. The doctor also had to decide how far the point of needle insertion should be from the edge of the wound.

Of course, practice made perfect.

Continuous practice was the only way for a doctor to constantly accumulate experience. If the human brain was equated to a computer, experience was equivalent to data.

The human brain could not process data straight away. It needed past cases as a reference.

Doctor Miao reckoned that, to be able to perform the heavy reinforcing suture and subcuticular suture so excellently, Ling Ran must have treated at least thousands of similar cases. And among them, some had certainly failed.

Doctor Miao looked around, and it was as if he could see the tears of those whose faces had been ruined smeared all over Lower Groove Clinic’s walls…

“All right, don’t let your wound get wet, don’t touch your wound, and make sure to get the stitches removed on time. You can also get them removed earlier…” After Ling Ran was done suturing the wound, he relayed the Standard Precaution for Patients while Juan Zi bandaged the patient’s wound.

That was something he repeated every time he finished debriding and suturing a patient’s wound. He always made sure to relay it without fail.

“Doctor, why don’t you add me on WeChat? It’ll be easier for me if I have any questions about my wound.” When the patient realized that it was time for her to leave, she was suddenly a little reluctant to do so.

“I don’t add ordinary patients on WeChat,” Ling Ran refused flatly.

The young woman pouted unhappily. “Why are ordinary patients discriminated?”

“Well, there’s nothing much that ordinary patients need to communicate with me through WeChat.” Ling Ran paused for a moment and said, “If patients with three or more severed fingers request that I add them on WeChat, I’d do so.”

When the young woman looked at her fair and smooth fingers, she immediately did not feel like adding Ling Ran on WeChat anymore.

“Doctor Ling, I’ll give Golden Deer Health Services a call and ask them to send more patients over.” Miao Tansheng was reluctant about giving up the chance to secretly learn Ling Ran’s craft, and he decided to use up what little resources he had accumulated before so that he could learn.

Ling Ran agreed to that. Suturing patients was much more interesting than playing with his phone.