My Medical Skills Give Me Experience Points

Chapter 1523 - 616: Targeting the Gray Matter, Family Trust as Motivation

Because the risk of surgery is extremely high, as long as you touch the vertebrae, it’s equivalent to altering the main support beam of a house. Both doctors and patients should be exceedingly cautious. The consequences can be likened to modifying the load-bearing walls during modern home renovations.After Zhou Can identified that the nerve function decline in the boy mainly began at the level of the Medulla Oblongata, he quickly recalled the anatomical structure of nerves in his mind.

Each segment of the spinal cord emits a pair of spinal nerves, totaling 31 pairs.

There are 8 pairs of cervical spinal nerves.

If you need to check, just examining the cervical spinal nerves is sufficient.

The remaining 12 pairs of thoracic nerves, 5 pairs of lumbar nerves, 5 pairs of sacral nerves, and 1 pair of tail nerves do not need further investigation.

Speaking of the tail nerve, there’s a particularly interesting phenomenon.

Most people have only one pair of tail nerves, but a few have 2 pairs of tail nerves. This type of person has a total of 32 pairs of spinal nerves.

Just like some people have only 8 molars, while others have 12.

Although medically the extra 4 are called wisdom teeth, their function is no different from molars. Having 4 extra molars, such individuals have stronger chewing abilities.

It seems like an inconspicuous enhancement of chewing function.

It seems like people with 8 molars can eat just the same.

In fact, people with 12 molars can benefit in many ways. First, their teeth are more stable, and in the same amount of time, they can grind more food. Moreover, they can grind food finer.

This can lighten the digestive function of the gastrointestinal tract.

Medically, whether in Chinese or Western medicine, slow chewing and thorough swallowing is recommended, which takes care of the body’s digestive organs.

Especially our stomach.

The stronger the digestive function, theoretically, the stronger that person’s body will be. At least they will find it easier to obtain nutrition compared to someone with 8 molars.

A person with an additional pair of spinal nerves is not a freak.

Some scientists believe this is a trait of incomplete human evolution. Because the extra pair of tail nerves could be viewed as being used to control a tail. However, humans have long since lost tails in the course of evolution.

This can make people with 32 pairs of spinal nerves have more flexible and powerful lower limb motor functions.

At least theoretically, it can be understood this way.

This little boy is unable to speak, move his head, or move his body.

To further investigate which segment of the cervical spinal nerve is problematic, checking an EEG or nerve conduction in the body makes it difficult to pinpoint.

According to the anatomical structure of the spinal cord, it comprises the gray matter, white matter, the central canal of the spinal cord, anterior and posterior tracts, spinal ganglia, spinal nerves, etc.

The gray matter part is the low-level central for human reflex activities.

Including patellar reflex, urination reflex, defecation reflex, sweating reflex, sexual reflex, etc., all require conduction through the gray matter of the spinal cord.

Many patients with lower body paralysis have incontinence, which indicates a problem with the low-level central nervous system.

Zhou Can performed the knee-jerk reflex on this child, checking the low-level nerve central system.

The right leg’s knee-jerk reflex was weak, and the left leg reflex was normal, indicating that there must be an issue with the gray matter part of the spinal cord.

This is actually a very good diagnostic direction.

He went to consult Director Yin because he wanted to use this as a breakthrough point to see if Director Yin could provide more diagnostic experience for him to learn from.

Director Yin indeed provided several valuable clinical diagnostic experiences, but they somewhat diverged from Zhou Can’s thought process.

Or rather, the two didn’t quite align.

It’s not that Director Yin’s diagnostic opinions were useless, but they didn’t point towards the idea that Zhou Can discovered.

This is also a common issue among veteran experts.

Because their clinical experience is too rich, their ideas are somewhat set, lacking the flexibility of younger individuals.

If one must describe it, the diagnostic thinking of older experts is more stable, while that of young doctors is more aggressive, potentially imaginative, potentially prone to errors, but sometimes finding the condition uniquely through a young person’s way.

Such phenomena occasionally occur in large hospitals, where old experts shake their heads in regret, believing the patient cannot be treated.

In the end, a young doctor manages to treat them successfully.

Of course, when the hospital promotes it, they maintain the dignity of the old experts, often giving the bulk of the credit to the chief physician, while the young doctor who actually cured the patient gets little acknowledgment. Sometimes it’s just glossed over.

Many young doctors may feel discontented, believing this is very unfair.

But if considered from the hospital’s interest perspective, it becomes acceptable.

Veteran experts are the hospital’s trademark, which they cannot afford to tarnish.

Moreover, every industry has a good tradition of respecting seniors. Even abroad, where interests are paramount, the same respect is given to teachers and elders.

In some developed countries abroad, doctors and nurses are paid based on age.

No matter how hard young doctors work, their income can’t match that of older doctors with more years of service.

In the domestic setting, this situation is slightly better.

Many well-managed large hospitals follow a performance-based pay system. However, pursuing absolute fairness is impossible.

The qualifications of veteran experts have been earned through experience, and it’s only natural for them to get more during performance distribution.

It’s like a sales manager who, even without working, can still receive a portion of the commission from the sales generated by their subordinates. These are industry norms.

Zhou Can pondered that the child’s spinal cord gray matter has a problem, and if the specific location of the damage is identified, could it pinpoint the location of the spinal cord damage in one stroke?

The little boy cannot move anything below the neck, and the sensory nerve function weakens the further down it goes, indicating the issue definitely extends beyond the gray matter part.