Chapter 441: Forced To Give Up
When the young man heard Zheng Ren’s words, he looked shocked. His face was pale as his entire body was wracked with sadness.
Zheng Ren did not know what to say either.
Paraquat, as its name implied, was a herbicide.
It was extremely toxic to the human body, its mortality rate extremely high. There was no special treatment or medication that could deal with it.
Under a certain oral dose of paraquat, the patient would exhibit symptoms of poisoning.
In the body poisoning symptoms, the most prominent was lung damage. The histopathological changes that would occur were similar to oxygen poisoning.
If the patient took a large dose of paraquat orally, there was a high probability of one to two days of acute respiratory distress syndrome, followed by delayed pulmonary fibrosis, and progressive respiratory difficulties, resulting in respiratory failure and death.
With most other pesticides consumed orally, gastric lavage and a range of other means could be used to treat it.
With paraquat, there was none.
The worst thing about consuming paraquat orally was that the patient basically had no symptoms of discomfort. In fact, he looked rosy and healthier than before.
A small number of patients would have acute symptoms, but for most, patients would suffer from pulmonary fibrosis ranging from three days to three months.
The specific time was related to how much was consumed.
Pulmonary fibrosis was irreversible, especially after paraguay had been consumed orally. The patient’s pulmonary fibrosis would continue to progress until the patient died.
This was a poison that was incurable but would not act immediately.
The young man was stunned for nearly a minute, his eyes void of emotions.
Zheng Ren looked at him and felt bad. He wanted to persuade the young man but did not know where to start.
After a minute of silence, the young man suddenly put his canvas bag in front of him and took some money out.
“Doctor, this is money my parents left me after they pa.s.sed away,” he said as he wept. His tears fell onto the crisp notes. “My uncle had a tough life. My cousin gambled and ran away after owing hundreds of thousands of dollars. My aunt divorced him a few months ago and he recently found out he has liver cancer. I have money here and this is all of it. Doctor, please save him. My uncle raised me and has never had an easy life.”
The money was not that much, just tens of thousands. However, this was all the young man’s savings. It was his college tuition, what he was relying on for his future.
Now, he had taken it all out and placed it in front of Zheng Ren.
The bright red was so eye-catching.
“Doctor, I’ve done my own research. I also know that there is no cure after one sip.” The young man looked at Zheng Ren with tears in his eyes. His voice was choked with sobs. “But that information was from a few years ago. Is there any medicine that can treat it with now? ”
Looking at the young man’s hopeful eyes, Zheng Ren knew that he was trying to find hope in all the despair he was facing right now.
How should he say it?
He could not.
Zheng Ren’s eyes dimmed as he shook his head gently.
In the young man’s heart, the glimmer of hope that had just risen was extinguished as expected.
“I knew it… I knew it…” the young man lowered his head and muttered.
“There are still a few more days. You have to accompany your grandfather well,” Zheng Ren said softly.
The young man was silent. His eyes were fixed on the yellowish wall.
“Young man, you’re still young. There are some things that you should do your best and leave to fate. You’ve tried your best but there’s nothing you can do.” Zheng Ren could only try his best to calm the young man’s emotions.
There were a few patients outside who wanted to come in. However, they saw the young man standing in the consultation room looking like a zombie. When they saw the wads of red banknotes on the table, they knew that something must have happened. Under persuasion from Fan Tianshui and the others… They could either sit outside and wait, or they could go to the surgical consultation room to see the patient first.
Zheng Ren patted the young man on the shoulder. After listening to his comforting words for a long time, the young man finally regained his strength.
He let out a loud cry as he broke down.
It was only then that Zheng Ren felt relieved.
Being able to cry out meant that he was fine. He was afraid that he would not be able to cry out, just like the family members of the patients who were stabbed in the heart at night.
Zheng Ren let out a long breath. Although he was a little disappointed, he had seen it many times, so he was more or less indifferent.
He put the wads of money on the table back into the young man’s canvas schoolbag and zipped it up.
Indifference was also a form of self-protection.
In the hospital, there were patients who had pa.s.sed away on the hospital beds every day. If he was not more indifferent, the doctors themselves would be hospitalized.
After sending the young man out, Su Yun had already pumped out the patient’s stomach.
The patient sat quietly on the chair. There was no joy, anger, sadness, sorrow, or fear. He had long seen through everything.
Seeing the young man come out, the patient stood up and smiled at him. He then bowed to Su Yun and Zheng Ren and dragged the young man out of the hospital.
“Let’s go.” Su Yun saw Zheng Ren’s blank expression and dragged him out through the side entrance.
At times like this, he needed a cigarette to sober up.
Su Yun rarely smoked but this time, he took out Zi Yun’s box from Zheng Ren’s pocket. The muscles on his face twitched as if he wanted to jest with Zheng Ren, but he held it back in the end.
He lit a cigarette and handed it to Zheng Ren.
“Life and death. There’s nothing else,” Su Yun said.
“Okay.” Zheng Ren took a deep puff of the cigarette. The smoke swirled in his lungs and only after he exhaled did he feel a little more alive.
This was not the first patient Zheng Ren had encountered who drank paraquat, nor was it the most tragic case.
Many years ago, when Zheng Ren was interning at university, he had encountered a case of drinking paraquat in the emergency department.
The couple had just gotten married not long ago, and they started quarreling over a trivial matter. The woman pretended to take a sip of paraquat in order to scare him.
The man did not know how powerful paraquat was. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it and said, “Let’s die together then.” He took a big sip from the bottle.
After that, the two people who drank the pesticide were moved by each other’s actions and made up.
What should they do after drinking the pesticide? They could go to the hospital and have their stomachs pumped. It was not a big deal.
After they arrived at the hospital, Zheng Ren’s teacher and the patient’s mother explained their complications after the gastric lavage. They said that if they drank paraquat, they would definitely die.
If their family had money, they could go to the ICU and use a ventilator to help them breathe. It might be able to extend their lives by about three months. However, that was a huge expense, so whether they could continue the treatment or not depended on their family’s conditions.
The patient’s mother cried then. After the patient came to ask about the situation, she scolded Zheng Ren’s teacher.
Everything had been spent on gastric lavage but they still needed to spend more money. The hospitals and doctors nowadays were really evil.
Zheng Ren could not remember most of what had been said.
After that, the couple who drank the pesticide left the hospital.
When they left, the two of them were loving each other. However, the medical staff present knew that their days were not long.
Half a month later, the two of them were sent over again.
As the man drank more paraquat than the woman, his condition was particularly bad. He was already showing signs of respiratory failure. Although the woman was in a better condition, she was not much better off.
A blue curtain was drawn in the emergency room. The two of them lay on their respective beds to receive resuscitation.
It was still Zheng Ren’s teacher and the patient’s mother who explained the patients’ condition. From the very beginning, their final fate had already been determined. The doctor was especially helpless.
In the end, Zheng Ren’s teacher advised the family not to resuscitate the patients.
It was already determined. No matter what they did, it was meaningless.
At this moment, the couple seemed to have realized their own fate.
At the last moment of a man’s life, he used all his strength to extend his hand to the woman’s side. However, the simplest actions usually appeared to be extremely difficult in the moment.
He did not manage to hold the woman’s hand in the end.
When he was halfway there, he took his last breath.
Although the woman’s condition was slightly better, it was not by much.
At this moment, she had also walked the last moments of her life.
She used the last of her strength to hold the man’s hand.
Between her fingers, she pa.s.sed through the blue curtain and touched her fingers with his. It was then that she pa.s.sed away.
Zheng Ren remembered this scene very clearly.
Life was filled with all kinds of helplessness.
However, the pair of fingers that were placed together in the end were still fresh in Zheng Ren’s mind.
He sighed and sorted out his emotions.
People still had to look forward.
After putting out the cigarette, Zheng Ren glanced at Su Yun and asked, “The professor and Gao…”
“Gao Shaojie.” Su Yun glanced at Zheng Ren disdainfully. “They are all sitting in the office. Let me tell you, you have to seize the right moment to kick out Chief Gao of the First Affiliated Hospital. Chang Yueke has already given her opinion about this.”
“Huh? What opinion?”
“There are too many people in the office. She can’t stand it.”
F*ck… This was definitely a valid reason.
“The main reason is that Teacher Gao has been using the hospital’s wifi to watch videos and has been using our bandwidth. Even when I play my games in the afternoon, I have to be on offline mode.”
Zheng Ren was speechless.
However, Zheng Ren immediately remembered the mission’s third phase which involved 100 TIPS surgeries.
Haicheng’s population is small, and its number of radiation cases eve smaller.
In the end, it would all depend on Teacher Gao.