Chapter 267: Perverted disease!

The rheumatology department was a rather strange department. It wasn't that the doctors or nurses in this department were strange, but rather that the department's diseases were strange. It wouldn't be possible to understand rheumatism without having a doctorate degree or equivalent. However, you would only need an undergraduate degree in order to treat rheumatism. That was because the majority of rheumatism patients would only have their symptoms treated. Treating the foundational problem was far too much to ask for.

Most rheumatology diseases were autoimmune diseases. Basically, the primary reason for rheumatism and its causes were still unclear! Regardless, your environment, lifestyle habits, and emotions might all be factors in getting rheumatism. The majority of rheumatism cases were difficult to cure!

Older farmers, especially older women, had worked hard for their entire lives. Now that they were older and in better financial condition, they no longer needed to perform heavy work. It was time for them to enjoy their lives. Yet, when they got up in the morning, they would feel sore all over, with fingers as stiff as iron bars. Those who weren't in much pain had probably done much good in their previous life!

Even if they went to the hospital for treatment, the doctor would at most be able to give them some pain medicine. That would then result in stomach pain after taking the medication for a few days. When they were in too much pain, they would search all over for scorpions, centipedes, and other so-called home remedies. Every year, there were countless Chinese people who would accidentally poison themselves to death while trying to cure their own rheumatism. However, what could really even be done about this? The hospitals couldn't cure the rheumatism!

There were also young and beautiful women who might go on vacation to a beach and comfortably enjoy sunbathing on the sand for several days. However, they might then suddenly have butterfly-shaped or round red spots start appearing on their face. Upon getting checked at a hospital, they would then learn that they had lupus erythematosus, commonly referred to as simply lupus! The medical field would refer to lupus as the precursor to cancer!

Maybe lupus was a pervert among diseases because it really favored young women! Lupus was also fond of visiting women who had already given birth to children! When women became pregnant, as well as after giving birth, their immune system would undergo massive internal changes. Maybe such massive changes would cause an opening for lupus to invade! Please treat your woman well if she was willing to give birth to a child for you! She was truly risking her life in order to do so!

Receiving too much sunshine on your skin would cause your skin to peel off. Skin was the first layer of protection for the human body. Once the skin became peeled off, the surface blood vessels would become exposed. Maybe that was how lupus would manage to invade the body.

When under the sun, please remember to wear sunscreen! This wouldn't be about vanity. This was about self-protection!

Maybe some people would say, "But my grandfather never used sunscreen in his life, and went out every day to work in the fields with no problem!"

Don't be stubborn! It would be best if you didn't get lupus, but lupus would be incurable if you got it. The majority of lupus patients would end up dying of kidney failure! So, if it was hot outside, please put on some sunscreen when going outside! It would be good for your health, and you can even be vain with it, so why not!

During the time of the Opium War when China was under Europe's and America's control, a certain rather special event occurred. Many of the newbie soldiers at a certain scouting outpost kept getting lupus. The medical experts kept investigating this matter and finally arrived at the theory that too much exposure to sunlight might lead to lupus.

The new soldiers were unaccustomed to the UV rays in the plains. They would have to remain standing for long periods of time under the sun. In just two short days, large patches of skin on their necks and faces would start to peel off. The unfortunate soldiers would then get lupus right afterwards!

Still, overall speaking, women, especially young women, would more commonly get lupus. As for all rheumatic diseases, apart from gout, most rheumatic diseases would affect women more commonly than men.

Rheumatic diseases were quite common as well. These diseases were quite ridiculous and incredibly cruel. After getting a rheumatic disease, it wouldn't kill you very quickly. Instead, it would torture you slowly with many years of chronic pain, making you gradually lose your ability to move and become crippled before it would finally kill you!

Taking medicine and receiving treatment over the years would only relieve the symptoms and slow down the speed of the rheumatic disease's development. That was all.

The rheumatology department wasn't a place for doctors who were bad at their studies. However, smart female doctors also wouldn't like this department. The smart female doctors far preferred the endocrinology department. Female doctors in the endocrinology department would be able to maintain a classy aura of being cultured and knowledgeable while speaking about factors and receptors in endocrinology!

Meanwhile, things wouldn't sound so high-class in rheumatology. First of all, a majority of patients would be female. The smart female doctors would feel the pain of being female. Not to mention, most of the patients would be poor women living in hardship. Thus, most female doctors didn't like this department!

Those who weren't good at studying also didn't like this department. The reason was quite obvious. You would have to explain the patient's condition to the patient. Rheumatology was all about antibodies, antigens, complements, chemokines, and so on. There were also many professional English vocabulary words and abbreviations. It wasn't like a doctor could just make up nonsense when explaining the disease. If the doctor met with a patient or patient's family member who was an expert in biology, that person would be able to expose an unknowledgeable doctor very quickly!

That was why doctors who weren't good at studying really didn't want to come to the rheumatology department. It would be highly difficult to fully understand the diseases in this department. However, treating rheumatic diseases was incredibly simple. There were only a few basic principles: lessen the pain, use hormones, and use biological agents if hormones didn't work. If that still didn't work, then use hormones and biological agents simultaneously. If that still didn't work, then okay, just let the patient be discharged from the hospital and return home! Rheumatic diseases really were so simply dealt with! They were just like a nightmare to humanity!

Chasu City Hospital's rheumatology department had nine doctors, a majority of which were male. A trait of this department was that most of its doctors were really nearsighted from too much studying with textbooks. The doctors in this department could really compare with the smart female doctors in endocrinology. If these two departments' doctors worked together to diagnose a patient, other departments' doctors would be really embarrassed!

The smart male and female doctors would really show you how much different they were from you!

The rheumatology department director was named Wu Wanghong. He was someone famous for his academic ability. He had a photographic memory, reaching the point where he was capable of telling you what page number a disease would be mentioned in a specific textbook! He was even more skilled at reading CT scans than the radiology director!

Wu Wanghong was quite a genius in internal medicine. He had come from a poor family, so after he graduated from college, he had given up on his chance to get a master's degree despite his excellent grades, and moved all the way over to the border province. That was because salaries in the border province were higher! This way, he would be able to help his family faster. He was from the generation in which colleges stopped helping their students to find jobs! Students now had to find their own jobs after graduation!

He seemed to be the nice and scholarly type. He always spoke slowly, and his hands always felt warm. He was a highly skilled and virtuous doctor of internal medicine. Maybe he was nice by nature, but he had cultivated the habit of keeping his hands warm intentionally. This was because he would often need to use his hands to examine patients. Keeping his hands warm would help the patients to be more comfortable!

Rather than complaining about being born into a poor family, he actually gained open-mindedness!

The youngest attending physician in the department was named Hu Jun. He appeared more like a martial artist than doctor. He was really strong and muscular, a stereotypical Chinese northwesterner. He had a really large and scraggly beard. Looking at him from behind, people would definitely think that he was a chef rather than a doctor.

Yet, a muscular guy like him really did have quite a lot of knowledge already regarding rheumatic diseases. He often wrote theses which were published in medical magazines. He was in his mid-30s already, but was still unmarried. Very few women would be able to talk with him about his favorite topic, especially in a smaller city like Chasu City. Hu Jun constantly went on and on about antibodies, antigens, and so on. Even the surgeons from the surgical departments wouldn't understand this, much less ordinary people.

The smart female doctors in the endocrinology were mostly married already, so Hu Jun could only remain single. He didn't really have any other hobbies apart from being a super bookworm. He had so many books at home that he could start a library. He would always buy more books whenever he was paid his salary. He would buy any book that he liked, no matter how expensive it was! That was all that he did with his money!

Zhang Fan transferred into the rheumatology department!