HPDBC Chapter 130 Su Qing's "Live" Dissection Report
Chapter 130 Su Qing's "Live" Dissection Report
Guan Shan's "gentle" bone setting gave Li Siyuan and Zhao Na a completely new, and even more outrageous, understanding of the phrase "learning has no end."
They began to seriously consider whether they should also audit a few classes at the veterinary station in the farmers' market.
However, before they could put this absurd idea into practice, a new challenge arose.
That afternoon, a seemingly ordinary patient came to the clinic. He was a middle-aged man in his forties, wearing a slightly worn jacket and looking listless.
"Doctor, I don't know what's wrong with my skin, could you take a look?" The man rolled up his sleeve, revealing his forearm.
Li Siyuan and Zhao Na went over to take a look and both frowned.
On the man's arm, there was a patch of skin about the size of a palm, which was a strange waxy yellow color. It felt hard to the touch and was completely numb, like a piece of plastic stuck to his arm.
"How long has it been?" Li Siyuan asked.
"It's been almost a month. It started as a small patch, but it's getting bigger and bigger. I went to the Third Hospital, and they did blood tests, lab tests, and a CT scan. They checked everything, and all the indicators were normal. The doctor said it might be a rare skin disease, or it could be nerve ending necrosis. They prescribed a lot of medicine, both oral and topical, but it hasn't helped at all," the man said with a worried expression.
"Besides your arms, are there any other places with it?" Zhao Na asked more carefully.
"Yes, there's one on my back too."
Li Siyuan asked him to take off his shirt, and sure enough, there was a patch of skin with the same symptoms on his back, near his shoulder blade.
The two interns circled the patient several times, using all four diagnostic methods: observation, auscultation, inquiry, and palpation. They finally came to the conclusion that pathogenic factors had entered the body and blocked the meridians, but they couldn't identify the specific pathogenic factor.
"Boss?" The two looked again at Wang Minyu, who was on the recliner, for help.
Wang Minyu didn't even lift his eyelids this time, and simply said, "Su Qing, come and see."
Su Qing, who had been sitting in the corner, using alcohol swabs to maintain a row of scalpels, put down the tweezers upon hearing this.
She stood up and walked over with unhurried steps.
Unlike Li Siyuan and the others, she didn't ask any questions or take his pulse. Instead, she slowly circled the middle-aged man like a lone wolf surveying its prey.
Her eyes were cold; she didn't look like a doctor looking at a patient, but more like a forensic pathologist examining a body that had just been pulled from a crime scene.
The man felt uneasy under her gaze and involuntarily shivered.
Su Qing suddenly stopped, brought her nose close to the man's sallow skin, and gently sniffed.
"It smells like phthalates and the aftermath of low-density polyethylene pyrolysis." Su Qing's voice was flat, as if she were reading a chemistry report. "Mixed with sweat and sebum, it has formed a slight esterification reaction."
Li Siyuan and Zhao Na were completely confused. What is phthalic acid? And what is polyethylene?
Wang Minyu's lips curled slightly. He knew that Su Qing's talent was about to come into play.
"Have you been coming into contact with a cheap mat that has a pungent plastic smell lately?" Su Qing looked up and stared directly into the man's eyes.
The man paused for a moment, then suddenly realized, "Right, right! I remember now! I bought a yoga mat online a month ago, the kind that costs 9.9 yuan with free shipping, and it had a really strong smell. I do push-ups on it every night, and that's exactly where my arms and back touch the mat!"
"The problem has been found." Su Qing turned around and went back to her seat, took a sealed sampling syringe from a refrigerator, and came back. "We need to take a tissue sample for microscopic section analysis."
"Do we have to cut it again? We already had it cut at the hospital, and they said it was just ordinary hyperkeratosis." The man was somewhat reluctant.
Su Qing didn't speak, but simply looked at him quietly with the same eyes she used to look at a corpse.
The man felt his scalp tingle from the stare, and finally could only steel himself and extend his arm: "Then...then please be gentle."
Su Qing put on sterile gloves and, with the deftness of a seasoned butcher, used a specially made circumferential cutter to remove a sesame-sized piece of tissue from the edge of the diseased skin.
The whole process was so fast that the man barely felt any pain.
She placed the sample on a glass slide, added staining agent, and then placed it under a microscope connected to a large screen.
"Li Siyuan, Zhao Na, come over and learn," Wang Minyu said.
The two interns quickly gathered in front of the screen.
On the screen, the skin tissue, magnified thousands of times, was clearly visible.
Interspersed among the normal cell structures are many translucent, tiny fibers that resemble plastic filaments.
These fibers have "grown" together with the subcutaneous tissue, forming a bizarre symbiotic structure.
"What...is this?" Zhao Na asked in shock.
"Industrial waste." Su Qing's voice remained icy. "In the production of substandard yoga mats, to increase elasticity and reduce costs, large amounts of plasticizers and recycled plastics are added. These substances, under the influence of body temperature and sweat, penetrate the skin in the form of microparticles. Because they are not living organisms, blood tests cannot detect them. Because they have already integrated with your tissue, CT scans cannot show any obvious lesions. Your body recognizes them as foreign objects, so it activates its defense mechanism, wrapping them with the stratum corneum, leading to hardening and numbness of the skin. This is not a disease at all; this is 'living tissue contamination.'"
Su Qing's explanation was clear, calm, and full of the rigor and cruelty of forensic medicine.
The man was stunned, and cold sweat broke out on his brow.
He never imagined that a yoga mat costing 9.9 yuan with free shipping could turn his body into a miniature "plastic dump".
"Is there...is there any hope?" he asked in a trembling voice.
"Yes." This time it was Wang Minyu who spoke up. "Since it's plastic, we need to use 'organic solvents' to solve it."
He went to the backyard and scooped out half a bowl of dark ointment from a jar, a pungent sour smell wafting out.
"What is this?" Li Siyuan asked curiously.
"The leftover scraps from Pierre's 'cilantro ice cream,' mixed with Old Wu's failed fermentation of vinegar, plus a few herbs to promote blood circulation and remove blood stasis, it's just right." Wang Minyu handed the ointment to Su Qing, "Apply it to him, wrap it in plastic wrap, and 'marinate' it for an hour."
Su Qing took the ointment expressionlessly and applied it evenly to the man's diseased skin, as if applying preservative to a corpse.
As soon as the ointment touched his skin, the man felt a burning, stinging pain, as if countless tiny knives were scraping his flesh.
"Bear with it." Su Qing only said two words, then wrapped him in plastic wrap like a mummy.
An hour later, when the plastic wrap was removed, everyone was stunned.
The hard, yellowish-brown skin had become much softer and its color had lightened considerably.
Even more surprisingly, a layer of greasy, plastic-smelling yellow liquid seeped from the surface of the skin.
"Alright, the poison has been removed," Wang Minyu said. "The consultation fee is three thousand, and the ointment will cost two thousand separately. Go back and burn that old mattress of yours. Remember, you get what you pay for, especially when it comes to ruining your body."
The man paid the money with profuse thanks, and before leaving, Su Qing handed him a printed report.
The man took it and almost fainted from fright.
The report is titled: "Forensic Identification Report on Unidentified Synthetic Attachment and Tissue Infiltration of Sample No. 404 (Living Body)".
The signature reads: Renxin Pharmacy, Chief Appraiser, Su Qing.
The man, clutching the "report" that was even more terrifying than a critical illness notice, scrambled away.
Li Siyuan and Zhao Na looked at Su Qing with eyes full of awe.
They finally understood why the boss had hired a forensic pathologist as a nurse.
Because some diseases that are considered difficult to diagnose by doctors may just be a different kind of "crime scene" in the eyes of forensic experts.