After being separated from my family, I became a darling of the military region thanks to my medical

A commotion arose in the audience as hundreds of pens simultaneously turned to new pages in their notebooks, the sound of page turning resembling a small waterfall.

Gu Zheng leaned against the wall in the last row, put the White Rabbit candy in his hand into his mouth, and slowly chewed it a couple of times.

He looked at the upright figure on the stage, and something indescribable was churning in his eyes.

Ye Zhen tapped her finger on the edge of the podium.

"The first case. The patient was a 67-year-old male who had been experiencing recurrent fever for three months, with swollen lymph nodes in multiple parts of his body. He had undergone two bone marrow aspirations, his pathological slides were reviewed four times, and he had consulted with more than 20 experts."

She paused for a moment.

"No one can be diagnosed."

"Where do you think the problem lies?"

Ye Zhen's gaze lingered on the front edge of the podium, waiting.

No one in the auditorium immediately raised their hand. A girl in the front row had her pen paused on the paper, her fingertip pressing so hard the lead was about to pierce the paper. A boy wearing glasses in the back row opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Ye Zhen didn't urge her. She turned around and walked to the blackboard, writing a few words on it with chalk.

Fever, lymph nodes, bone marrow aspiration, biopsy.

"Watch this process," she said, putting down the chalk and pointing to the blackboard. "What did the doctor do?"

A graduate student finally raised his hand, and Ye Zhen called on him.

"Diagnose according to textbook methods?"

"Yes." Ye Zhen turned to face the podium. "The textbook says that for recurrent fever with generalized lymphadenopathy, what is the most common diagnosis?"

Lymphoma.

"Yes, and then we all rushed in this direction." Ye Zhen gestured a direction in the air, her movements swift. "Bone marrow aspiration to check for malignant cells, pathological slides to check for lymphoma morphology."

She stopped and scanned all the students from front to back with her gaze.

"But one problem was overlooked."

"What?" the girl in the front row asked in a low voice.

"Besides fever and swollen lymph nodes, does the patient have any other symptoms?"

The auditorium fell silent for a moment.

Ye Zhen didn't wait for an answer and continued speaking.

"Recurrent oral ulcers, which had occurred at least three times before admission, were only mentioned in one line in the medical record, and no one asked about them."

She held up her second finger.

"There was a small patch of residual pigmentation on the skin of my forearm, which the attending physician dismissed as a trace of drug rash that had subsided."

The third finger.

"The patient said their eyes were dry and very gritty, and asked the nurse for eye drops twice. It wasn't even mentioned in the ward rounds record."

She lowered her hand.

"If you look at these symptoms one by one, nobody will take them seriously."

"How about viewing them together?"

On the second-floor stands, a student's notebook had turned to a new page, and the pen tip was moving rapidly.

Ye Zhen continued, "All the symptoms point to one pathological mechanism: autoimmunity. It's not a tumor; it's the immune system attacking itself."

A boy in the front row raised his hand.

"Dr. Ye, what does that pigmentation on my forearm indicate?"

"Good question."

Ye Zhen took two steps closer.

"After the drug rash subsides, the skin will return to normal without leaving any marks. But that pigmentation is not a drug rash; it's caused by inflammatory infiltration that has invaded the dermis."

She extended her index finger and tapped the inside of her forearm.

"I touched that area during my physical exam, and there was still a hard lump under the skin. Think about it, under what circumstances would the skin show this condition?"

"Vasculitis?"

The voice came from the third row. The boy who spoke wasn't quite sure himself, and his tone rose at the end of his sentence.

Ye Zhen glanced at him.

"What's your name?"

"Zhou... Zhou Xiaochuan."

"Zhou Xiaochuan, your intuition is correct."

"The inflammatory infiltration and fibrinoid necrosis of the blood vessel wall point to systemic vasculitis."

Ye Zhen walked back to the blackboard and drew a large circle around all the keywords.

"Oral ulcers, dry eyes, cutaneous vasculitis, periodic fever, and elevated polyclonal globulin levels. Putting these together, it doesn't point to lymphoma."

She wrote down the final diagnosis from outside the circle.

Histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis, complicated by systemic vasculitis.

"The key word in this case has never been lymphoma."

Ye Zhen put down the chalk and walked back to the podium. "The key words are: What did you see? Have you ever thought that these seemingly unrelated symptoms actually tell a story?"

The girl in the front row's eyes started to redden again. She remembered last week in the pediatric ward, there was a child with recurring diarrhea. Everyone was checking for digestive system diseases, and no one thought to ask if anyone in the family had tuberculosis. After a week, they finally discovered it was peritoneal tuberculosis caused by the mother's pulmonary tuberculosis. If it had been a week later, the child would have died.

Gu Zheng leaned against the wall, listening to Ye Zhen recount the medical procedure. Her voice was unhurried, each word resonating deeply with her listeners. He subconsciously took his hand out of his pocket and scratched his chin.

While some students were already taking notes, Ye Zhen began to talk about the second case.

"The patient is a 19-year-old female, diagnosed with severe Marfan syndrome."

She paused, letting the identity information settle in her mind.

"The primary care physician and her family both believed that she should receive conservative treatment or have surgery abroad. Because in their minds, the level of medical care abroad is definitely better than that in China."

Some students started whispering among themselves.

"What was the result?" a bold girl shouted from the second-floor stands.

Ye Zhen glanced at her. "In the end, I performed a new procedure called the David procedure on her. It preserved her own heart valves and only replaced the root of her aorta."

She gestured with her hand to her chest.

"After the surgery, she can live like a normal person. She won't need to take anticoagulants for life, and she won't need to tell her future partner that she has osteogenesis imperfecta."

Her tone was devoid of pride; she was simply stating a fact.

"What is this story trying to tell you? It's not that foreign healthcare is bad. It's that medicine has no borders, but doctors need to have a high level of professionalism. When others are doing an 80% job, do you dare to think of a 100% solution?"

Ye Zhen walked to the edge of the podium and looked at the students at eye level.

"You may think the grass is greener on the other side now. But ten or twenty years from now, it will depend on whether you work hard to make the grass greener on the other side too."

The students standing in the back row exchanged glances.

"These two cases teach you how to think, the first one teaches you how to break free from preconceived notions."

She walked out from behind the podium and went to the front of the stage.

"Has anyone here ever regretted studying medicine because they felt it was too difficult?"

No one raised their hand, but the shoulders of the students in the front row were lowered.

"Yes," Ye Zhen answered her own question. "Anyone can. The most desperate moment for a doctor is standing by a patient's bedside, watching as all medical knowledge proves useless, and all they can do is wait with her to die."

Her voice was unusually calm.

"However, we must never give up on any patient who can be saved."

Ye Zhen turned and walked back to the podium. She didn't give any concluding remarks, nor did she ask if anyone had any questions. She simply picked up her handbag and walked to the edge of the stage.

"Some people call me a miracle doctor. No. I'm just a doctor who gets up early every day, carefully reviews medical records, performs surgeries diligently, and spends my evenings researching medical literature."

"If you are willing to do this, in ten or twenty years, you will also be seen as miracle doctors by others."

The entire auditorium remained silent for a full three seconds.

Then applause erupted.

Starting from the front row, one by one they stood up, clapping their hands loudly. The male students in the back row also stood up.

Gu Zheng didn't clap. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed in front of his chest, watching the applause erupt from the silence. A slight smile played at the corners of his lips.