At a Loss

After Song Tian finished talking, he motioned for Xu Chen to come with him to find the doctor. He wanted to know exactly how his father was doing.

The doctor seemed to be taking Father Song's condition seriously. He had been handling paperwork in the doctors' office by the nurses' station, so Song Tian easily found his father's attending physician.

The attending physician was a middle-aged man. Xu Chen glanced at the information board nearby and saw from the doctor's profile that he actually had a master's degree.

Song Tian explained to the doctor, who was sorting documents, why he had come. The doctor did not turn him away. He merely sighed, rummaged through the documents he had just organized, and took out a handwritten record.

"We're taking your father's illness very seriously. We even invited a professor from Tianping Cancer Hospital to diagnose him, but the situation doesn't look good..."

Xu Chen glanced at the doctor, looking a little surprised. Tianping Cancer Hospital was a top-tier tertiary hospital with extensive research into cancer and tumors. Besides a military research institute, it also had technical support from three top universities. When it came to treating tumors, few hospitals could match it, not just in the country, but in the entire world.

They had probably invited someone from Tianping Cancer Hospital because they had seen that Father Song's disease was progressing atypically and had no choice but to seek outside help.

"The patient already has one foot in the blast phase. He'll develop symptoms of internal bleeding and an enlarged spleen, and if he gets an infection, there'll be nothing we can do to save him."

"Then what's going on with his thighs?"

The doctor gave Xu Chen a surprised look. Even Song Tian looked at Xu Chen in confusion. "Huh? What's wrong with my dad's legs?"

"The illness may have caused a lesion in his thigh bones. I discussed it with an orthopedic tumor specialist, and for now, we haven't seen any signs that it could endanger him. The bone marrow inside is still normal. It seems to be nothing more than bone hyperplasia, so there's no need to worry about it."

Xu Chen understood what the doctor was implying. If an ordinary person had bone hyperplasia like this, they would certainly find a way to treat it. But for a patient in the blast phase, it was not worth treating, nor could it be treated. For one thing, the patient could deteriorate at any moment, leaving them with neither the money nor the patient, so treatment was far too poor a return for the cost. For another, the patient's body could not withstand it. If he underwent surgery and developed an infection or bleeding at this critical point, that really would hasten his death.

"I saw a lot of the same kind of medicine on the bedside cabinet?"

"Oh, we stopped those medicines. They weren't doing much, so there was no need to keep taking them."

"Then how do you treat him from here?"

The doctor fell silent. Xu Chen had stumped him, because he did not know what medication to use next either. There was simply nothing he could do to save the patient.

Song Tian saw the doctor's predicament and immediately realized why. His voice trembled. "Then, can my dad still be saved?"

The doctor nodded. "I'll do my best."

Xu Chen looked at the doctor and suddenly fell silent. He remembered something one of his teachers had said in class.

"There are actually very, very few diseases humans can cure. Once you become doctors, you'll find that you can cure almost nothing."

At the time, he had scoffed at it. He had thought that the enormous increase in modern life expectancy was all thanks to advances in medicine. If they could not cure any diseases, wouldn't that all be false?

Only now did Xu Chen understand. It was not that the teacher had never cured a patient. On the contrary, he had saved countless lives. It was just that the patients he had failed to cure were so deeply etched in his mind that he could not forget them. He felt there were far too many patients in the world who could not be saved, and that was why he questioned the meaning of his work.

"Doctor, could gene therapy cure him, then?"

The doctor froze for a moment. "Gene therapy does stand a good chance. But since you know about it, I won't hide it from you. I've thought about it too, but the patient's disease is progressing far too quickly. The medication... might not be ready in time, and there's a high chance the money spent on it would go to waste."

Xu Chen had not expected the medicine to be unable to keep up with the patient. But on second thought, he could understand. Developing a gene therapy drug for a particular patient did take time. Even if he did not know how long, it certainly could not be done quickly—so slowly that the doctor did not think the patient could hold out until it was ready.

"Then why is his condition progressing so quickly?"

"Ah, young man, that's a difficult question for me to explain to you."

"This guy's a medical student. He'll understand," Song Tian explained from the side.

The doctor finally understood. "Oh, you're here to learn about his condition for him, right? But I'm guessing oncology isn't your specialty?"

"No, but I know a little about it."

"You're eager to learn. That's a good thing," the doctor said approvingly. "In that case, I'll show you my meeting notes. Consider it some practical experience. But remember, don't disclose the patient's private information."

"Don't worry. His son is watching me."

The doctor nodded. He had seen Xu Chen come in with the patient's family member, and the young man kept asking questions until he got to the bottom of things. Since he knew a little medicine, the doctor thought it better to let him look at the records himself rather than waste his breath putting everything in plain language.

Xu Chen did not stand on ceremony. He really was curious why the disease was progressing so quickly.

After a quick look, he confirmed that the patient seemed to have extremely severe resistance to every existing drug for treating chronic myeloid leukemia. The patient's hematopoietic stem cells were also abnormally active, consuming large amounts of nutrients. That was why the disease was progressing quickly and was difficult to treat.

Someone prominent seemed to have spoken with the attending physician in the notes, explaining the mechanism behind the patient's drug resistance. Among the factors was the abnormally high activity of Brc-Abl tyrosine kinase, which could not be suppressed by medication. The effects on the factor receptors c-Kti and PDGFR were also minuscule. Taking the drugs was little different from not taking them at all.

Although Xu Chen did not know what this kinase and the factor receptors were, he did not need to understand them. He only needed to know that there was no medicine that could treat Song Tian's father.

Still, Xu Chen looked back and forth, his gaze wandering until it finally settled on the record about the abnormally high tyrosine kinase activity. He seemed to have heard the words "abnormally active" in his internship group, but one concerned fungal activity and the other cells—or rather, cancer cells. For now, the two were worlds apart, so Xu Chen did not give it much thought.

He was just struggling with how to explain it to Song Tian.

After thinking it over, he could only put the documents down and pat Song Tian on the shoulder. "I've finished looking. Your dad's condition isn't very good. I'll help you ask the counselor for leave. Spend the next few days with your dad."

Song Tian's body jolted, and he stared at Xu Chen in disbelief. "Why would you say that? Is my dad really..."

"Ah, I can't say for certain, but it's very likely. This was written by a doctor from Tianping Cancer Hospital. Oh, Tianping Cancer Hospital is the best hospital in the country for treating tumors, including chronic myeloid leukemia. Their conclusion is practically set in stone."

"My... my dad really has no options?"

"I don't know. I'll help you find out if there are any medical trials. Some drug development projects might need volunteer patients. Maybe there's a new drug that happens to work on your dad's illness, and he'll get better after taking it? But that's just something to try when there's nothing else to do. It all comes down to luck, so don't get your hopes up."

Although such medical trials did exist, the state was extremely cautious about clinical drug trials on humans. Not only was the approval process long and strict, but the patients were also carefully selected. And drugs in early development had numerous, frightening side effects. He was only saying that to comfort Song Tian.

If there were not even a little hope, it would be too cruel.

Song Tian's eyes reddened at once. He understood now that his father really could not be saved. He stared silently at Xu Chen with reddened eyes for a long while, his gaze full of pleading, hoping that Xu Chen was only joking. In the end, perhaps he had come to terms with it. He nodded heavily. "All right. Please talk to the counselor for me."

Xu Chen nodded.

Song Tian said goodbye to Xu Chen and went to the ward. His sister had been taking care of their father for days, and their father did not have much time left. Whatever conflicts they had had before, he really should fulfill his duty as a son in the time remaining.

Afterward, Xu Chen tidied the documents he had just looked through. They had been neatly arranged when the doctor showed them to him, so he ought to put them in order before leaving. Otherwise, it would be too ill-mannered.

While sorting them, however, Xu Chen noticed a paper file envelope labeled "photos of the affected area." Without having to think about it, he knew they had to be photos of the affected areas on Song Tian's father's thighs, so he took it out separately.

This was patient privacy, but as a medical student, Xu Chen was simply too curious about what this kind of bone hyperplasia looked like. So he opened the envelope and took a look.

Xu Chen would have been better off not looking. The moment he did, he was stunned.

He felt the same way he had when he first joined the internship group and saw the photos Academician Qi had brought out. One word.

Disgusting.

The photos showed two twisted masses of flesh, the muscles taut and ridged with furrows, as though something alive were wriggling inside them. Blue veins bulged beneath the skin like old vines and tree roots, varicose.

Xu Chen finally managed to make out that they were indeed two thighs, but he could not for the life of him understand how a case of bone hyperplasia could make them look like this. They were like the intertwined branches of a century-old tree he had seen; the patient's muscles had come to run in equally bizarre patterns.

Bone hyperplasia of this severity had completely robbed both legs of their function. It could certainly be called a limb deformity.