Chapter 242: The desire to live!

Every single skill-based job would have a barrier to entry. This barrier would be of different difficulty level depending on the job. The plight of the people in the medical field was that this barrier would be different depending on the person. For people who viewed being a doctor as nothing more than a job to make some money, it would actually be quite easy. They only needed to work hard for the first seven to eight years and obtain a medical license. Then, they could easily get by while being nothing more than a doctor in a small clinic and mostly treated the common cold.

But if you truly wanted to be a good doctor, then you would be quite pitiful. No matter if it was internal medicine or surgery, it was common for new knowledge to replace old knowledge before you even mastered it. People who were young would often want to challenge themselves, learn, and fight as hard as they could. But when they finally had enough experience and knowledge as a doctor, they would be old already. This was the problem of skilled nerds.

If you stayed at home all day to watch anime and play video games, that wouldn't make you into a skilled nerd. That was only an otaku. If you took a look at any Class B or higher-level hospital, for the resident doctors there, just take a look at their personal medical textbooks. Any resident doctor who didn't have at least two or three tattered textbooks from how much page-flipping they had to do wouldn't be a hardworking doctor. This was why doctors had no free time to interact with those not from the medical field.

This would be even more so for surgeons. If you wanted to become an accomplished surgeon, then you would need to grind and learn an incredible amount of knowledge. You would need to learn everything there was to know about anatomy and pathology regarding your specific surgery department's part of the human body. You would need to learn to the point of memorization. You would need to be capable of envisioning the body part's nerves, blood vessels, and 3D image all in your mind.

Although this sounded quite simple, it would take a countless amount of time to accumulate such knowledge. Any regular doctor who'd accomplished this would at least be in their 30s to 40s already. Yet, this still wouldn't be enough. Doctors would still have to constantly learn. Human bodies weren't widely available for you to study surgery with. It wasn't like humans were animals or cars.

That was why hospital leadership would always feel conflicted. They would urgently desire for the younger and more inexperienced doctors to gain enough experience to become independent, yet the leadership also wouldn't dare to allow the inexperienced doctors do things by themselves. Thus, the hospital leadership could only have the veteran doctors slowly teach the younger doctors by working on surgeries together. At the hospital, you would have to work hard, learn as much as you could, and experience gradually being promoted from intern doctor to resident doctor and then attending physician before you finally had enough skills to be completely mature. Such a doctor would almost always be past 40 already.

That was also a doctor who had experienced success through their entire life. If a doctor failed the medical license examination for one or two years, or if their foundational medical skills were still insufficient when being assigned to a department, then it would take even longer for the doctor to mature. That was why the hospital was also a place where interpersonal relationships were really important. Office culture would be magnified even more here. To give an example of what might happen if you got along poorly with others: maybe you would be highly skilled at performing appendectomies already, but you would find that you would never receive any opportunities to work on intestinal obstruction surgeries. Why was this? It would be because others considered you to be the type to never learn. Once a doctor realized this, their precious youth would have passed already!

Zhang Fan had the tremendous advantage of his System. Due to his System as well as his own hard work, he was slowly breaking free from office culture suppression. He was now viewed as a genius. Once a genius had showed his skills, then there would be almost no more difficulties for him in this environment. Nobody would be an idiot. Once they saw that the genius couldn't be suppressed, then why not help them to reach even greater heights?

That was how things currently were for Zhang Fan in Chasu City Hospital. When the rectal cancer surgery reached the urology portion, the urology director could only watch as Zhang Fan began the urology portion without even saying anything to him, the urology director. Not only did the urology director not become angry by this disrespect, he even did his very best to assist Zhang Fan, being worried about becoming a burden!

This was all the result of Zhang Fan having worked so hard for the past two years.

Zhang Fan finished removing the tumor. The surgery now proceeded more quickly after this. Since Zhang Fan wasn't talking at all, nobody else really talked, either. This was all about personal style. Since the primary surgeon wasn't the talkative type, the others felt too awkward to talk.

Zhang Fan cleaned the blood vessels, nerves, and lymph nodes with extreme care. Since three expert doctors were assisting him, they provided him with wonderful vision for the surgery. If you watched this surgery from bird's-eye view, you wouldn't feel like this was a bloody scene at all. Of course, there would still be a lot of red. The muscles were bright red, a stark contrast against the white fat. To give a vivid analogy, the patient currently seemed like a pig which had been drained of blood. The pig had been cut open in the abdomen, not seeming much different from the large pieces of pork you would see in the meat section of the supermarket.

Zhang Fan finished cutting out the bladder and reconstructing the ureter.

"Let's begin constructing the artificial passages!" Zhang Fan announced gently.

It was as if a light switch had been flipped. When Zhang Fan said this, the dead silent atmosphere in the operating room suddenly came alive again.

"Zhang Fan, should we wait for the lymphatic disease examination? Logically speaking, you probably cleared enough, but shall we wait a little while longer?" asked the general surgery director.

"No need to wait. I touched the tissue already and ascertained that there's no problem. It's healthy tissue," Zhang Fan answered while continuing to perform the surgery.

Any other young doctor who dared to say that to the veteran doctors here would have instantly been kicked off the surgery. However, nobody was even surprised that Zhang Fan would say something like this. This was the preferential treatment that he was receiving because everyone thought he was a genius. No genius like him had ever appeared at Chasu City Hospital before!

"Director Zhang, how about you come to our urology department? I'm getting old, so if you come to our department, I can help you for a few years and then I'll retire! The urology department is still bigger than the proctology department, and also has better developmental potential," urology Director Li offered while smiling. Although he didn't know if Zhang Fan would actually come to urology, it wouldn't cost him anything to say nice words like this.

Zhang Fan glanced over momentarily at Director Li. "Director Li, no need to be humble. You're still capable of working for another 20 years!"

"Director Li probably learned some new type of mental spirit!" Vice Director Chen of general surgery made a rather veiled joke about Director Li. This was actually poking fun at Director Li since his ex-girlfriend was Superintendent Ouyang. Vice Director Chen could only do this because they were around the same age and rank. Otherwise, Director Li definitely would have gotten furious.

"Damn you, stop spouting rubbish. You guys in general surgery just wait. Once Director Zhang teaches a disciple or two, there probably won't be any work left for all of you in general surgery."

"Haha, that's perfectly fine. As long as Zhang Fan wants to start his own general surgery department, I'll definitely be the first to jump over and work under him."

"Then will you be in charge of patient checkups, or will it be Director Zhang?" Director Li chuckled.

Actually, Vice Director Chen was intentionally saying that he would go work under Zhang Fan so that general surgery Director Zhao could hear it. Vice Director Chen was implying: "I have no interest in your director position, but don't suppress me too much, otherwise I'll jump ship to go work somewhere else!"

"Jump ship? Dream on! I'm preparing to hand over the major general surgeries to you. There's no chance for you to slack off," Director Zhao, too, spoke up at this time. In just a few short sentences, they came to an unspoken agreement.

"Haha." Zhang Fan laughed rather meaninglessly. He actually understood what they were really saying, but he didn't want to get involved. There was no need. He felt that his current status in the hospital was best for him.

Rectal cancer surgery was incredibly cruel because the anus couldn't be preserved, and the bladder also had to be cut out of the body. This meant that you would lose the two most important exit passages in your body.

Those who were older might have a slightly easier time and still manage to live on. That was because they would have already gotten accustomed to all sorts of inconveniences brought about by an aging and weakening body. Constructing artificial passages for the urinary tract and anus might even help relieve pain from the prostate in men.

However, this surgery was far too cruel for a youthful person who experienced such things even before old age. What was one supposed to do about peeing and pooping without an anus, bladder, or ureter? They would have to rely on artificial passages constructed on the sides of the abdomen, slightly above and inside the hipbone. One side would be for peeing, and the other side would be for pooping.

Rectal cancer surgery was indeed effective for saving lives. This surgery type also had a very high survival rate for five years after the surgery. However, the situation was such that usually it would help lengthen the lives of those who were already old, but actually shorten the lives of those who were young to begin with!

Life really would be inconvenient afterwards with the artificial anus constantly smelling like feces. Living like this was usually too torturous for someone younger whose other organs were still very healthy. It was common that many young people would start losing their will to live within one or two years after undergoing rectal cancer surgery. They would slowly lose the desire to live, leading to slowly cutting themselves off from society.

Humans were social creatures. The result of cutting oneself off from society would usually lead to other illnesses that might then cause death. This was all because younger people couldn't get accustomed to the inconveniences of living with an artificial urinary tract and artificial anus.

Thus, the most important way to help young people who had undergone rectal cancer surgery would be to have a strong support system from the person's family, hospital, and psychologist. Although this sounded quite simple, it would be really, really difficult to pull off. Most normal young people would still have an incredible amount of trouble adjusting to life after rectal cancer surgery.

The rectal cancer surgery was now almost finished. The three older surgical assistants constantly adjusted their positions and massaged their sore limbs. They also stopped chatting, since Zhang Fan wasn't the talkative type, and also because they were truly tired.

More than six hours after the surgery began, the rectal cancer surgery finally concluded!