I Am Diagnosed as a Medical Titan

Chapter 305: Chapter 206: Old Friends

「The next day, at Affiliated Hospital No. 1.」

After Zhao Yumin finished his rounds with Chen Hao, he told him to stay and organize the medical records.

”Haozi?”

Xu Chen walked over from a short distance away.

He’d changed his bearing recently. His gait and posture were gradually starting to resemble Jiang He’s.

’If you’re going to imitate someone, you have to imitate everything...’

Xu Chen said, ”What brings you to the ER today? Isn’t your project on a tight deadline? I heard you’ve even been skipping classes these past few days.”

Chen Hao said, ”We’ve switched to two shifts. Today’s my day off, so I figured I’d come to the ER and learn a thing or two from Teacher Zhao. What about you? I’ve seen you around the hospital lately. You’re not working on Professor Sun’s project?”

Hearing this, Xu Chen sighed. ”Don’t even mention the project.”

”What’s wrong?”

”Our project wasn’t going very smoothly to begin with. We’ve been stuck on the extraction phase for a while now. Then last night, something must have set Professor Sun off, because he started spouting nonsense in the project’s QQ group chat in the middle of the night.”

”What did Professor Sun say?”

Xu Chen took out his phone, pulled up the QQ group chat history, and showed it to Chen Hao.

A little after three in the morning, Sun Changming’s account had sent several messages in a row.

[Sun Changming]: Impossible! Absolutely impossible!

[Sun Changming]: Forty minutes? A purity of 1.95+? *This* is the standard we should be achieving!

[Sun Changming]: Scrap all our previous extraction protocols! Start over! I refuse to accept this!

Chen Hao stopped reading and handed the phone back to Xu Chen. ”So? All your previous work is down the drain?”

”Yeah. He mumbled a bunch of incomprehensible stuff in the group chat, but the gist was to scrap everything and start over. A few of the graduate student seniors in the group didn’t dare say a word. All in all, it feels like progress is at a complete standstill. Professor Sun didn’t even go to the lab today; he took the day off to rest at home.”

Chen Hao patted Xu Chen’s shoulder in a small gesture of comfort.

Xu Chen put his phone away. ”Forget it, let’s not talk about that. Oh, right, I’ve got some intel for you.”

”Did you and Han Yuan get together?”

”Ugh! That’s not it!!!!”

”Oh, hahaha, go on, go on.”

”Jeez. It’s about that Clinical Skills and Reasoning Competition from before. The province thought it was a huge success with a lot of influence, so the higher-ups have already decided to expand it into a national competition. The official documents will probably be sent out next month, and the competition will officially start early next year.”

Chen Hao froze for a second.

’The Clinical Skills Competition? Didn’t Director Yang mention that the other day? He asked Jiang He to be a judge for this national competition.’

’Oh...’

Chen Hao remembered.

Xu Chen hadn’t been there at the time.

Seeing Chen Hao remain silent, Xu Chen assumed he was stunned by the news and continued, ”I’m planning to sign up for this national competition.”

Chen Hao came back to his senses and asked, ”Are you sure you want to go? The competition at the national level will be way more intense than in the South China Region.”

”I’m sure. What about you? Are you participating?”

Chen Hao considered it seriously for a moment.

After scrambling through his time in the emergency department and doing high-intensity research with Jiang He in the lab, his mindset had long since changed.

He said, ”I don’t know, I’ll think about it. If I get the chance, I might give it a try.”

Xu Chen nodded, then asked, ”What about Brother Jiang? Is Brother Jiang participating?”

Chen Hao’s expression was strange. ”Jiang He... Jiang He should be participating, I think...”

Xu Chen said, ”That’s great! I know there’s a huge gap between me and Brother Jiang right now, but I’m going to work my ass off. A student competition, no matter what, still tests the fundamentals, right? So I want to give it a shot, solidify my foundation, and see if I can get a little closer to Brother Jiang on the competition floor.”

Chen Hao grunted. ”I have a feeling it’ll be hard for you to get any closer to him.”

Xu Chen’s brow furrowed, a hint of displeasure showing.

”Hey, man, what I said wasn’t that out of line, was it? I didn’t say I wanted to beat him, just that I wanted to close the distance a bit. Did you have to shoot me down like that?”

Chen Hao looked at Xu Chen’s dissatisfied expression and sighed inwardly.

’If this were the old him, he would have blurted out the truth by now.’

But the Chen Hao of today was much more composed.

’He could even keep the whole ”marriage-within-a-marriage” thing a secret, so what couldn’t he keep under wraps?’

In any case, the matter of Jiang He being a judge was still confidential until the official documents were released.

Jiang He himself hadn’t said anything about it. As his brother, Chen Hao absolutely could not be the one to blab.

So, Chen Hao said calmly, ”Brother Bing, I’m not trying to put you down. It’s fine. You’ll get it when the time comes.”

Xu Chen was baffled by Chen Hao’s profound and mysterious attitude.

He muttered, ”Acting all weird,” and walked away.

Chen Hao thought to himself:

’Oh, buddy. Your rival is actually going to be one of the judges writing your exam questions. I hope you can keep your cool when you find out.’

...

「That morning.」

After breakfast, Jiang He also came to the hospital. On the way, he received a call from Lin Han.

”Jiang He, what are you doing?”

”On my way to the department. What’s up?”

”Have you heard the news that the province is organizing a national clinical skills competition? We’ve already received verbal notice over here. The university is currently screening potential candidates.”

”Yeah, I heard.”

”Are you participating?”

At the South China Region competition, Lin Han had witnessed Jiang He’s perfect-score performance with his own eyes.

For Lin Han, losing to Jiang He wasn’t shameful. What was shameful was not having the courage to challenge him again.

He said, ”The difficulty of this national competition is definitely going to be much higher, and with the expanded scope, a lot of top students will be there. If you participate, we could review the fundamentals together. Then we can face off again at the competition.”

Jiang He smiled, listening to his old friend’s earnest invitation.

He naturally had nothing to hide from Lin Han.

”I most likely won’t be participating as a contestant.”

”Why? With your skill, you have a chance at the national championship. It would be great for your resume.”

”Because, if nothing unexpected happens, I’ll probably be a judge.”

There was a long silence.

Lin Han said, ”Oh. Congrats. Sorry to bother you. Hanging up.”

Jiang He felt a little resigned.

He could just imagine the look on Lin Han’s face right now.

’But there’s nothing to be done about it. I don’t have time to compete against my peers anymore.’

’What I have to face are the academic sharks across the Pacific Ocean, watching with predatory eyes, and the demons of critical illness hidden in the depths of time.’

’Getting a perfect score on those two tests will be incredibly difficult.’

Jiang He made his way to the hepatobiliary surgery ward.

After his unconventional promotion to independent medical team leader in the Hepatobiliary Surgery Department of Affiliated Hospital No. 1, Jiang He was given his own office.

It wasn’t large, but it meant he had independent authority to admit patients and act as the lead surgeon in operations.

Inside the office, Meng Shiyu was already waiting for him.

”Leader Jiang, morning!”

Jiang He took off his jacket. ”Is everything with the patients sorted out?”

”All sorted. As you instructed, the four patients transferred today from several secondary hospitals and from out of province have all completed their admission procedures. They’re now settled in our team’s beds.”

Jiang He nodded, sat down behind his desk, and opened the medical record on top of the pile.

These were the patients Jiang He had screened for last night using Zhiyu.

He had searched the forums for patients whose initial symptoms were vague and whose routine biochemical markers showed no significant abnormalities yet, but whose physical signs—like abdominal and back pain—were highly indicative of extremely early-stage severe acute pancreatitis (SAP).

Then, under the identity of Zhiyu, he had left comments suggesting the attending physicians at these primary care hospitals immediately refer the patients to the Hepatobiliary Surgery Department at Southern Medical University First Affiliated Hospital.

Jiang He did this for two reasons.

First, of course, was to save lives.

Extremely early-stage SAP is highly deceptive. Once the optimal window for intervention is missed, the mortality rate is extremely high.

If these patients stayed at the primary care hospitals, they’d have a slim chance of survival.

Second, it was to validate the early SAP prediction model that Feng Ye had just built.

He would use the actual clinical progression of the cases to retroactively prove the model’s accuracy.

In medicine, this is called a prospective clinical cohort validation. It was a win-win.

”What are the patients’ vitals like now?” Jiang He asked while quickly scanning the various lab reports.

Meng Shiyu immediately reported, ”Their vital signs are all stable for now, but two of the patients’ amylase and lipase levels are starting to show a slow upward trend. The primary care hospitals’ initial diagnosis records all say acute gastroenteritis, but looking at this trend, something isn’t right.”

Jiang He wasn’t surprised at all.

He said, ”Notify the nurse’s station to draw blood from these four again. Input the data into the model and see what the prediction is.”

”Understood.”

”Also, strictly monitor their urine output, respiratory rate, and blood oxygen saturation. If there’s any abnormality at all, notify me immediately.”

”You got it. I’ll get right on it.”

Meng Shiyu walked quickly out of the office.

Jiang He opened another medical record.

This was another special patient he had found, aside from the ones with SAP.

The reason he was special was that this person was famous in his previous life as a ”Chemo Saint.”

Despite having late-stage pancreatic cancer, he’d managed to hang on for many years. The man was always happy-go-lucky, and he and Jiang He had even gotten along pretty well.

Looking at his medical records, he indeed had not yet been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

—’Isn’t this a lot like Shen Yu’s situation?’

Therefore, how to save him, and how to treat him, was a very serious problem.