Chapter 471: Selective Treatment

Although the prognosis was uncertain, Shi Niaoren, on behalf of the Ministry of Health, still informed the anxiously waiting Lu Shouyong of the news that the patient had regained consciousness.

Upon hearing that his wife was out of danger, Lu Shouyong finally breathed a sigh of relief. For the wealthy, the death of a wife after a promotion and fortune was a joyous occasion, but for a humble family, it was a catastrophic blow. To marry this wife and buy a house, he and his father had spent all their savings from several years at the shipyard.

Overwhelmed with gratitude for the “chief’s” life-saving grace, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy. After all, his wife had to be “hospitalized for a month,” and how to take care of the child became a major problem, especially since it also involved breastfeeding.

Fortunately, Ai Beibei had also considered this and said that the child could continue to stay in the nursery and be artificially fed by the nurses until the mother recovered and was discharged from the hospital.

“First, go and complete the procedures, then go back and bring some more clothes and items for the mother and child. And your medical certificate—now that your child is hospitalized, you need both of your certificates.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll go get them right away! Thank you, chief, for your great kindness!” Lu Shouyong was so grateful he didn’t know what to say. Disregarding the “breach of etiquette,” he immediately knelt down to kowtow.

Ai Beibei finally managed to escape the emotional rollercoaster of Lu Shouyong, who was now half-crazed with a mixture of shock and joy, and returned to her office.

She was sore all over, but her work for the day was not yet finished. She was also the director of the pediatrics department—a position that weighed heavily on her. Although she had studied pediatrics in university, she had never worked a single day in the field. In terms of pediatric experience, she was not as rich as the nurse Zhang Ziyi, who had rotated through various medical departments.

Moreover, Ai Beibei had a soft heart. She couldn’t bear to see children suffer. The pediatrics department of the “Third Outpatient Clinic” not only had to treat the children of the elders and naturalized citizens, but also had to be responsible for the treatment and healthcare of the children in the quarantine camps, especially the large number of orphans who had been taken in. Most of these children were in a state of long-term malnutrition, with extremely poor immune resistance, and could easily die from some very minor illnesses.

With the current medical and health standards of the Senate, most general internal and surgical diseases could be treated to a certain extent. Some could not be cured, but at least some relief could be provided. There had also been a qualitative leap in maternal and child healthcare, especially the preparation of a batch of vaccines, which provided effective prevention and treatment for many fatal epidemic infectious diseases in early childhood. The smallpox infection rate among local children in Lingao had dropped to less than two per thousand after their vigorous promotion of cowpox vaccination, significantly reducing the mortality rate.

However, the treatment of children was different from that of adults, especially newborns and young children, whose organ functions were not fully developed. Medication needed to be used with great caution. Moreover, the drugs and vaccines produced by the Ministry of Health’s manufacturing plant had purity problems due to technical limitations. Many times, they could only treat a dead horse as a living one. In short, the mortality rate in pediatrics was very high, which she had always found difficult to accept emotionally.

In the past few days, there was a child of a naturalized citizen in the pediatrics department who had a severe respiratory infection. Treatment with the antibiotics produced by the manufacturing plant had been ineffective for many days. Ai Beibei knew that if she couldn’t use the anti-inflammatory drugs brought from the old world, he probably wouldn’t survive. Although many anti-inflammatory drugs were no longer “level-one controlled substances,” their use on naturalized citizens still required the approval of Dean Shi. Ai Beibei shook her head. The reason she was reluctant to have another child was that she found the choice of such differential treatment too realistic and too cruel.

In any case, she would take a film today first—she still had the authority to order a film. She would consider whether to apply for the use of drugs based on the severity of the film.

The next morning, after finally getting a full night’s sleep, Shi Niaoren hastily ate breakfast and went to check on Lu Shouyong’s wife. Although her thinking was a bit slow and she was bedridden, her memory was basically unaffected. She could answer the questions of Shi Niaoren and her family, and even took the initiative to ask to see the child. Shi Niaoren arranged for the child to be brought from the nursery and let her hold her newborn son.

After the head nurse, Zhang Ziyi, personally changed the dressing for her intubation wound, Dean Shi called Liu San, the director of the traditional Chinese medicine department, to the ward to give her acupuncture, which was said to have the effect of clearing the mind and calming the nerves. At the same time, he instructed Liu San to prescribe some drugs and supplements that could nourish the nerves. Only then did he leave the ward and return to his long-abandoned office in the Ministry of Health on the side of the hospital.

Ever since Shi Niaoren became the minister and dean, administrative affairs had piled up on him like an avalanche—and the scale of the avalanche was getting bigger every month. In the past few days, due to his busy medical work, he had performed several operations in a row, attended consultations, and taught classes, so the paperwork had piled up. At this time, the minister’s huge desk was piled high with all kinds of documents.

The documents had been sorted by Shi Niaoren’s personal secretary at the Ministry of Health and the secretary of the general hospital. They were neatly stacked in categories, but Shi Niaoren knew that just signing and stamping all these documents would be enough to give him tenosynovitis, let alone reading them all.

But he had to read them. Who knew what kind of private goods Director Deng Bofang had stuffed inside? This person was the most adept at such clandestine maneuvers, and Shi Niaoren had to be extra vigilant.

Minister Shi sat at his desk for a while, then raised his head in agony. He was about to reach for the first document when Zhang Ziyi pushed the door open and came in.

Zhang Ziyi held an X-ray film and handed it to Shi Niaoren. “Dean Shi, here’s a film. Dr. Ai would like you to take a look at it.”

Shi Niaoren turned to find the sun, held up the film, and read it against the sun. The light was not ideal, so he could only make do. “Reduced transparency, dense—patchy shadows, the apex of the lung seems to be blunted… Remember to install a film viewer in my office in the future. I can’t see clearly outside the film reading room… Lobular pneumonia would be good, but I hope it’s not atelectasis…”

“Looks like a child’s film? Which elder’s son is it?”

Zhang Ziyi replied, “No, it’s the child of a naturalized citizen, 1 year and 3 months old, with a fever for more than a month accompanied by a cough. On admission, the physical examination showed poor spirits, coarse breath sounds in both lungs, a few moist rales, and the liver was about 2.5 cm below the ribs. The effect of sulfanilamide treatment in the hospital was poor. Yesterday, edema appeared in both lower limbs. Dr. Ai Beibei decided to take an X-ray to see. Not only was bronchopneumonia confirmed, but also bilateral pleural effusion and interlobar effusion.”

Shi Niaoren frowned slightly. “Didn’t I say that we don’t know when we’ll be able to replicate the X-ray tube, and that we should be cautious about signing off on its use for anyone other than the elders and their families…” He then changed his tone and smiled. “Haha, although we infectious disease doctors in the United States can be all-purpose doctors in the TV series House, there are still conditions we are not familiar with, haha… In fact, the local immunity of the respiratory tract of infants is not perfect, and their ability to localize respiratory inflammation is poor, so they are prone to lobular pneumonia. At this stage, the airway diameter of children is relatively small, the mucous membrane tissue is rich, and the secretory glands are vigorous. After respiratory infection, it is easy to cause small airway obstruction, so wheezing is common… The compensatory ability of the infant’s lungs is insufficient, and the diaphragm is easily fatigued. Respiratory failure is prone to occur after pulmonary inflammation. Since most pneumonia is accompanied by bronchial inflammation and obstruction, it mainly manifests as type II respiratory failure… When you are nursing, you must pay attention to keeping the patient’s airway open, clearing respiratory secretions, turning over and patting the back, and relieving airway spasm…”

Shi Niaoren beat around the bush for a while and finally managed to fool Zhang Ziyi away. He knew very well why Ai Beibei had sent her, but he really couldn’t make up his mind. Even the supply of these expiring antibiotics was dwindling…

He had just started to deal with a few documents when the door was suddenly pushed open. It was the furious Ai Beibei.

“Oh, Dr. Ai, what’s the matter?” Seeing that the situation was not good, Shi Niaoren quickly put on a smile that showed he had not forgotten his comradely friendship despite his busy schedule.

Ai Beibei said with a serious face, “Old Shi, the patient’s lower limb edema appeared after several days of sulfanilamide treatment, which shows that the condition is worsening, to the point where cardiogenic bilateral lower limb edema has appeared. Aren’t you going to suggest upgrading the antibiotics? As for this film, although the chemical department can’t produce the negatives for now, celluloid and silver salt photosensitive materials were mentioned at the last Planning Institute briefing as things that can be self-produced in the near future—this shows that there are always more solutions than problems. Sooner or later, we will be able to build our own X-ray tubes. Why are you so stingy with the naturalized citizens who are loyal to us? That Liu Dalin, that exploiting class master who doesn’t know the difference between grains, you sent him doctors and medicine, and even sent Zhang Ziyi to take care of him for so many days. Now that the common people need treatment, why are you so unwilling to part with a single hair?”

Shi Niaoren was a little embarrassed. “Liu Dalin was an instruction from the Executive Committee, um, the Senate… Little Ai, I’m actually a human rights activist myself. How many of those military geeks who want to use our clinical trial base in Fuyou to test their killing machines have I scolded away? But you have to know that human rights are not innate; they develop with the development of society. Before we transmigrated, the law and the government work report said that we all enjoyed basic medical care. After we transmigrated, the level of productivity dropped, and the basic medical treatment we enjoyed back then is gone now, isn’t it? Isn’t our Ministry of Health now desperately fighting for universal public medical care? Of course, the conditions are not yet mature. In my opinion, the barefoot doctors we are training in three-month batches are just mass-produced quacks. At least after they get a Class A diploma, they should study systematically for two years and have a secondary school education; then, under our guidance, they should receive two years of clinical training and reach the level of a county-level quack in the 60s and 70s before they can be considered presentable! But training them now can fill the gap in grassroots medical care and play an indispensable role in the course of historical development… Anyway, the natives in this world are used to children dying young…”