Chapter 752: Difficult to Treat

Chapter 752: Chapter 752: Difficult to Treat

As soon as they entered the consultation room, Wang Lan’s son asked anxiously, "Excuse me, which of you is Dr. Li Xu?"

He looked at the people in the room—Li Xu, Li Lin, and Wang Xue. None of them looked old; in fact, they were quite young. A hint of doubt rippled through his mind. He wondered, "Isn’t the legendary Divine Physician a bit too young?"

"I am," Li Xu greeted them mildly.

"Hello, Dr. Li. We made a special trip here after an old friend highly recommended you," Wang Lan’s son said politely as he carefully helped his mother sit down on a chair.

"Teacher Wang, please have a seat." Li Xu also recognized the veteran actress and greeted her politely. He didn’t show excessive enthusiasm due to her status, maintaining a doctor’s professional attitude. "Did you bring her previous medical records and examination reports?"

"Yes, yes, they’re all here." Wang Lan’s husband quickly pulled out a large stack of medical records from a file folder and handed them to Li Xu.

Li Xu took the records. As he flipped through them, he asked, "How is her usual diet? Is her appetite okay?"

"Sigh, don’t even mention it. Her previous doctors said she had to restrict her diet for this illness. They wouldn’t let her eat meat, fish, or any ’trigger’ foods. For over a year, she’s only been eating boiled vegetables, white steamed buns, and plain porridge. There hasn’t been a drop of oil in her meals," Wang Lan’s husband said with heartache. "She already had trouble eating, and now she’s getting thinner by the day."

Li Xu looked through the medical records and said without looking up, "When you go back, other than avoiding overly spicy, stimulating, or ice-cold foods, let her eat and drink whatever she wants. Meat, eggs, fish, soup—whatever she craves, she can have. There’s no need for too many dietary restrictions."

"Huh?" Wang Lan’s husband and son both froze for a moment.

Li Xu closed the medical records and looked up at them. "In traditional Chinese medicine, Teacher Wang’s illness is called ’exhaustion-induced urinary dysfunction.’ A prolonged illness will inevitably lead to deficiency. Right now, her body’s vital energy is extremely depleted, and what she needs most is nutritional support. If she eats plain porridge and green vegetables every day, there will be no source to generate Qi and blood. How would she have the capital to fight off pathogenic factors? She must eat well and nourish her stomach Qi first."

"Yes, yes, we’ll keep that in mind."

To Wang Lan’s son and husband, Li Xu’s words sounded like heavenly music. They were overjoyed. As her family, watching their loved one being tormented by illness every day while having to avoid this and that—not even able to eat a bite of meat—was incredibly heartbreaking. Now, with Li Xu’s medical advice of "eat whatever she wants," it was simply like issuing them a special pardon.

"How is her sleep?" Li Xu continued asking.

"Not very good," Wang Lan spoke up weakly. "I always have to get up in the night. I go to the bathroom a lot, trip after trip. I can’t sleep soundly at all."

"Here, rest your hand here. I’ll check your pulse." Li Xu pushed a small cushion over, letting Wang Lan place her arm on it, and gently rested three fingers on her radial artery.

He concentrated and calmed his mind. Judging from the pulse, the heartbeat felt very weak under his fingers. Moreover, the pulse position was quite deep, requiring slight pressure to feel clearly. This was a typical "deep and weak pulse," indicating internal deficiency syndrome, which meant that her Qi, blood, and internal organs were all weakened.

After checking her pulse, Li Xu asked Wang Lan to open her mouth so he could examine the coating on her tongue. Her tongue was reddish in color, lacked moisture, was somewhat thin and small, and had very little coating. This was a sign of Yin deficiency with excessive fire, and a depletion of body fluids.

Seeing Li Xu finish the examination, Wang Lan’s son finally couldn’t help but ask, "Dr. Li, is my mother’s illness... hard to treat?"

"Hard. It’s definitely hard to treat." Li Xu didn’t offer any comforting pleasantries. Instead, he said frankly, "If it were easy to treat, you wouldn’t have gone to so many major hospitals and struggled for so many years without a cure. Wouldn’t you agree?"

Hearing Li Xu’s direct answer, although the hearts of Wang Lan’s family of three sank for a moment, they unexpectedly felt an inexplicable sense of trust.

A formidable doctor of traditional Chinese medicine was absolutely comprehensive. When treating an illness, they didn’t just prescribe medicine for the symptoms; they also knew how to figure out the subtle psychology of the patient and their family. When a true Great Physician treated an illness, it was never simply a matter of writing a prescription and calling it a day.

In fact, Li Xu highly revered the core philosophy proposed by the Medicine King, Sun Simiao: human life is precious, and humans are the foundation. The reason Sun Simiao’s two peerless medical masterpieces, Essential Formulas Worth a Thousand Gold Pieces and Supplement to the Formulas of a Thousand Gold Pieces, were crowned with the words "Thousand Gold," was due to their opening statement: "Human life is of paramount importance, more precious than a thousand pieces of gold. To save it with one prescription is a virtue greater than this."

This "thousand gold" referred to humans. It was also a reminder to future generations of healers that in practicing medicine and treating illnesses, one must always put humans first and value human life and dignity above all else.

Wang Lan’s illness had dragged on for nearly twenty years. She was a typical severe chronic patient whose condition had lingered for a long time. This type of patient had experienced countless medical visits, struggling between hope and disappointment. They often lacked sufficient trust in doctors and even harbored a defensive mindset. Therefore, when treating such patients, communicating with them and their families to build a bridge of trust was extremely important.

Whether this illness was truly "hard to treat" in Li Xu’s eyes or not, he would still solemnly tell the family that it was "very hard to treat." After all, she had been tormented for twenty years. If he were to casually say, "This is easy to treat, a piece of cake," the patient and her family wouldn’t think highly of his medical skills. Instead, they would think he was bragging, brushing them off, or even suspect he was a big fraud. First lowering expectations before raising them was the only way to demonstrate one’s true ability.

Li Xu looked at Wang Lan and said, "Currently, Teacher Wang’s biggest problem is difficulty urinating—frequent and urgent urination, but never feeling fully emptied each time, right?"

"Yes," Wang Lan nodded. This was exactly the nightmare that had tormented her for twenty years.

"Since we want to treat the illness, we first need to understand the nature of the symptoms. What causes this difficulty in urination? Only by clearly finding where this ’switch’ is can we prescribe the right medicine and hit the mark in one fell swoop." Li Xu patiently used an analogy for them. "It’s like a repairman fixing something. You have to first figure out where the short circuit is, or which gear is stuck, in order to solve the problem, rather than just swinging a hammer around blindly."

As he spoke, Li Xu told a short story.

"I know a friend whose central air conditioning suddenly broke down and wouldn’t start during the hottest time of summer. Because it was central air, it was quite troublesome. The main unit was suspended on an equipment platform on the exterior wall. Their home was on the twenty-sixth floor, a super high-rise, so checking the main unit was not only extremely troublesome but also quite dangerous.

"At the time, my friend called a repairman online. After the repairman arrived, without saying a word, he tied on a safety rope and climbed out the window. High up on the twenty-sixth floor, he struggled under the blazing sun for over forty minutes. He was exhausted, sweating profusely, and his clothes were completely soaked. But in the end... he couldn’t fix it."