My Medical Skills Give Me Experience Points

Chapter 1548: Chapter 627: Three Major Sequelae of Thalamic Hemorrhage, A Benevolent Physician (Part 2)

Whichever it is, it’s extremely tricky.

The doctors from several departments all didn’t dare take her, obviously also considering the huge risks involved.

If they admit the patient and she dies, what if the family makes trouble and sues?

From the moment we’re born, humans know how to seek benefit and avoid harm.

No matter how kind a doctor is, they naturally won’t do something that’s clearly bad for themselves.

Otherwise that would just be stupid.

Zhou Can continued studying the patient’s records.

The small county hospital had actually even done an MRI for the patient.

You have to know, an MRI scanner is not cheap. At the very least it costs over twenty million, most of them are in the thirty‑million range.

There isn’t a single imported piece of equipment that’s cheap.

Foreigners are ruthless when it comes to earning technology fees like this.

They make a huge profit selling us the equipment, and then they keep making money on maintenance and repairs.

They won’t even let us watch during installation.

I believe many factory owners who’ve bought imported equipment from abroad have taken this kind of hit: after buying the equipment, they still have to hire two foreign technicians. Full board, travel expenses, salary all covered, worshipped like ancestors.

Installation and calibration of the equipment, and any problem during operation, all have to rely on those two foreign technicians.

This feeling of having your throat gripped at the technical level has left countless Chinese people stifled and aggrieved.

But there was no way around it; those were the conditions at the time.

We could only learn from King Goujian of Yue, sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall, and endure first. Once we developed, we could break free from these technical chokeholds.

A county‑level hospital that can afford an MRI scanner is definitely not small in scale.

Otherwise, even if the hospital leaders’ brains overheated and they wanted to buy a piece of equipment costing tens of millions, it would be very hard to get approval from above.

Zhou Can thought to himself that the county hospital must have some real experts too.

It showed that after their own consultation, the county hospital doctors had also realized the patient’s lesion was probably not that simple.

It probably wasn’t a simple thalamic hemorrhage.

CT is very precise, but each has its strengths and weaknesses.

Every diagnostic device has its pros and cons.

Right now MRI is generally recognized as the most precise imaging modality.

But even MRI scanners have different tiers.

The highest precision ones can already reach millimeter level.

Tuya has one installed.

Getting an appointment is extremely difficult; waiting in line for a week is already considered good.

Zhou Can carefully went through the patient’s cranial MRI scan and immediately felt more certain.

"Cheng Xiaolu!"

"Mm!"

"Your mother’s intracranial hemorrhage is not in a good state at all. With conservative treatment, there’s almost no hope. And in her condition she definitely has to go into the ICU, and the daily treatment cost will be astronomical."

Zhou Can could empathize with how hard it was for an ordinary family.

Her father had been disabled in a construction site accident; her mother farmed at home, occasionally doing odd jobs for others, with very limited income.

And they’d put her through university and then grad school, which was enough to drain all the savings of this struggling family.

After she finished school, she did get a job in the pharmaceutical department at Tuya Hospital.

But that department loses money every year; the salaries of R&D staff are not high. At most they’re at a normal industry level, just enough to keep talent from leaving.

If she chose conservative treatment, her mother would definitely have to be admitted to the ICU. Given the current condition, she’d certainly need to be put on a ventilator. The daily cost would be at least over ten thousand.

To be honest, hoping to stay in ICU for a day or two and then transfer to a general ward is almost impossible.

Half a month would be the bare minimum.

And that’s the most optimistic, conservative estimate.

The patient only has the New Rural Cooperative Medical Insurance; anyone who understands the reimbursement ratio knows what that means.

If she were treated at the township health center where she lives, the reimbursement ratio would be high. At Tuya Hospital, you can only say having it is slightly better than not having it.

The one with genuinely high reimbursement is employee health insurance.

Of course, the most privileged coverage is for retired cadres.

But that type of insurance isn’t accessible to ordinary people, so for most people the most reliable option is still employee insurance. As long as you’ve contributed for 25 years, you get lifetime medical coverage, which is quite good.

Most ordinary folks don’t have many health problems when they’re young; it’s when they get old that all kinds of illnesses start popping up.

That’s just the normal cycle of life and death.

As people age, their metabolism slows, cellular division and renewal in the body almost grind to a halt, all physical functions keep deteriorating, and immunity gets worse and worse.

An ordinary minor cold that a child might sleep off in one night and recover from,

could be fatal for an elderly person.

"My recommendation is to operate on your mom. The total cost shouldn’t exceed fifty thousand yuan, but the potential risks of surgery are huge, including intraoperative accidents and severe postoperative complications, and so on. And in her current condition, Neurosurgery may not even agree to do the operation."

Zhou Can also sympathized with this family, which is why he was offering the treatment plan that best served the patient’s interests.

But before surgery there has to be a preoperative risk assessment.

In her current state she’ll most likely fail the assessment, and that’s a major problem.

Zhou Can couldn’t force Neurosurgery to accept the patient and operate. Even if he had that kind of pull, the outcome would probably be thankless.

"Dr. Zhou, I know you’re a good person. As long as you can save my mom, I’d be willing to work like an ox or a horse for you for the rest of my life."

She at least worked in Tuya’s pharmaceutical department; she might not fully understand the rules on the clinical side, but she knew a bit.

After hearing Zhou Can’s recommendation, she felt an unprecedented despair.

Looking at her mother lying unconscious, if she couldn’t get timely treatment at Tuya Hospital, she probably wouldn’t live for many days.

If this were ancient times, she would’ve been willing to pawn herself to Zhou Can as his personal maid just to save her.

"Don’t do this, don’t do this, get up, quickly!"

Zhou Can couldn’t very well go pull her up, so he could only keep reaching out with a hovering hand, signaling for her to stand.

Fortunately the young nurse was quick‑witted and hurried over to help her up.

Her face was already covered in tears.

For poor people, faced with a terrifying illness and cruel reality, beyond crying, they truly are powerless.

"Here’s what we’ll do: you wait here for a bit. I’ll go discuss it with the department leadership. If it’s possible, we’ll first admit her here to the Emergency Department, and then I’ll try to invite Director Wu from Neurosurgery to do a joint surgery with me. But it will be very difficult to arrange, and it requires extremely high cooperation and trust from you as family members."

There was one thing Zhou Can didn’t say out loud.

That is, if the patient dies after surgery, the family must not cause trouble.

Human nature is the easiest thing to fail under pressure.

Tuya Hospital has a dedicated legal team for this. With cases like this, professional lawyers will come forward to sign the appropriate agreements with the family, to make sure that if the patient dies post‑op, the family won’t be able to stir up trouble.

Big hospitals are indeed much stronger than small ones when it comes to bearing the risk of medical disputes.

Let alone a county‑level hospital, even a mid‑to‑large city‑level hospital will often transfer or conservatively treat high‑risk patients.

Zhou Can went to report the situation to Director Lou and Dr. Xu.

After discussion, Director Lou was somewhat opposed to admitting this patient. But people’s hearts are made of flesh; after hearing Zhou Can explain the family’s situation, he fell silent.

As a department director, he bears responsibility for the safety and development of the whole department, so he can’t always let his compassion run wild.

He can only harden his heart and refuse some patients.

But he could see very clearly how much Zhou Can wanted to help this family.

So he didn’t object too strongly.

Dr. Xu looks strict, but he’s actually very soft‑hearted.

Whenever he can help, he’ll try.

Even after having one medical accident and ending up in a miserable state, he still hasn’t changed his original intentions.

"Xiao Zhou, in theory I should firmly oppose this. But as long as the risks on the family side can be controlled, I’ll let you go ahead. At most it’ll raise the mortality rate of our Emergency Department’s treated cases a bit, and that price is still within what we can bear."

After thinking for a moment, Director Lou gave his opinion.

He was the commander‑in‑chief of the Emergency Department, so his opinion was basically the final word.

"Thank you, Director Lou. I’ll go discuss it with the patient’s family. Once I confirm there’s no problem, I’ll admit the patient first."

With Director Lou’s nod, Zhou Can immediately felt much more at ease.