Laryngeal Swelling? Can Divine Arts Handle It?

Gret had performed Tracheal Intubation not ten thousand times in his previous life, but at least eight thousand. In a hospital, three departments did this procedure most often: anesthesiology, otolaryngology, and the emergency department, where doctors had to know a bit of everything and be versatile specialists.

For scheduled surgeries requiring intubation, they could call an anesthesiologist or ask someone from otolaryngology for help. After all, otolaryngology had "laryngology" in its name. They were familiar with the anatomy of the throat and were all experts at tracheal intubation. Everyone just had to schedule the operation, complete the assessment beforehand, and arrive on time.

The emergency department had no such luxury. If the patient was already suffocating, that tube had to go in immediately. Were they supposed to call for a consultation and wait for someone from anesthesiology or otolaryngology to come running down? Elevator or stairs, a patient could die in those few minutes!

That was why the miserable emergency doctors always had to roll up their sleeves and do it themselves when faced with this kind of situation...

The problem was that Gret had inserted all kinds of tubes in his previous life: through the mouth, through the nose; after opening the trachea, or without opening it; standard ones, ones reinforced with stainless-steel wire, ones with an extra suction tube...

But he had never used anything like this.

A. Chicken. Bone.

Both ends had been cut off and roughly smoothed down. Spongy bone still clung to the middle, and its sanitation was highly questionable...

If he had any choice, Gret truly didn't want to use this thing as a substitute for an endotracheal tube. But there was nothing else at hand... As a replacement, a chicken bone could only be called better than nothing.

As he worked, he also had to painfully explain things to the priest:

"After the Cricothyrotomy is complete... What is the cricothyroid membrane? It's the place I cut. You can't just cut anywhere on the neck; cutting here is the safest...

"After making the incision, you need to quickly insert a tube into the trachea, so the cricoid cartilage doesn't compress the damaged area and cause laryngeal stenosis. What's cricoid cartilage? Why would it be damaged, and why would that cause stenosis? I don't have time to explain that now...

"A child's laryngeal cavity is very narrow, so the tube can't go in too deeply. If it goes too far and enters the esophagus, we'll have a huge problem..."

On and on he went.

If this had been one of his students asking such basic questions, Gret would've thrown them out and beaten them to death—what had they learned in class if they didn't even know this?

But priests in another world naturally couldn't be expected to understand any of this. And circumstances were stronger than people, so Gret had no choice but to devote half his attention to placating him.

He explained with his mouth while his hands worked. There was no surgical lamp, no incandescent light, only dim candlelight and torches—and no one was even helping him reflect the light with a mirror. Even Edison had known to use a mirror when saving his mother!

Uh, although apparently that story had later been made up...

"Oh, then..."

"Don't talk! It's starting!"

The priest jolted at his shout and pressed his lips tightly together. Gret lowered his head, aligned the chicken bone with the cricothyroid membrane incision beneath the wavering light, steadied his hand, and pushed inward.

After a slight resistance came the familiar sensation of suddenly giving way at his fingertips, telling him that the tube in his hand—the chicken bone—had passed through the incision and entered the laryngeal cavity.

A faint, whistle-like sound of airflow immediately traveled through the chicken bone in the laryngeal cavity and reached Gret's ears.

The procedure was complete!

Next came... uh, securing it...

Damn, damn it!

There was no adhesive tape!

No tool that could stick to the chicken bone and secure it to the patient's neck so it wouldn't shift!

What the hell was there around here that he could grab for an emergency fix...

On his first day after crossing into another world, during his second emergency operation, Gret was brought to tears once again.

Facts proved that when it came to healing the sick and saving lives, a doctor's imagination and creativity were limitless. Gret hesitated for less than a second as he looked at the throat with a chicken bone stuck in it, then immediately made up his mind. He grabbed the child's hand and shoved it into the farm owner's grasp.

"Uncle Edmond, hold him tight!"

He stressed the words urgently. As he spoke, he grabbed the farm owner's other hand and pressed it onto the child's shoulder.

"Don't let him move! Not even a little! Especially the tube in his neck—it absolutely, absolutely cannot move!"

The bearded farm owner nodded vigorously and called several other men forward. They all pitched in to hold the boy down. The priest of the Spring Goddess had been holding his breath as he watched from the side. Only now did he dare let it out, hurriedly asking:

"So it's all right now?"

"Not even close!"

Gret smiled bitterly. He pointed at the child's throat and gestured for the priest to look.

"See? His larynx is still swollen. The child still can't breathe normally—he won't be out of danger until the swelling goes down."

"Is that so?"

The priest bent down and tried his hardest to look, even coaxing the child to open his mouth. But the hall was simply too dark. He stared for a long time without seeing clearly, agonized over it for a while, then snapped his fingers.

With a soft snap, a ball of white light floated up, bobbing gently toward the child's mouth.

"Hey!"

Gret caught sight of it and immediately panicked.

"Don't treat him yet! You can't just treat him casually in this condition!"

"But it's only an Illumination Spell..."

The priest shrank back a little after being yelled at, looking somewhat aggrieved. The Roman Knight stood beside him with his hand on his sword, glaring furiously at Gret. Gret didn't notice the knight's glare at all. He leaned close to the priest and kept pointing things out.

"Look inside his throat... all the way in the back. It's all swollen, isn't it? There should've been a dark hole in there, but now you can't see anything. The area even farther down is swollen too. He couldn't draw in air and nearly suffocated just now. Hey, you're a priest of the Spring Goddess. You can control water—can you reduce swelling?"

"What does 'reduce swelling' mean?"

"Make the water in those swollen areas flow out, so it doesn't block his throat to death."

"This..."

The priest was stumped on the spot. He frowned and thought for a long time before shaking his head.

"There's a somewhat similar offensive Divine Art. It's high-level, and it drains all the water from the body at once. My rank is nowhere near high enough. As for drawing water out of such a small area... I don't know. I'll pray and see whether I can receive Divine Grace..."

He did as he said. The young priest adjusted his posture and, without caring how much dust his silk robe would pick up from the earthen platform, knelt on both knees and clasped his hands before his chest. He murmured a long passage, then another long passage. At last, he raised his head and sighed in defeat.

"No. The goddess didn't respond to me... What about you? Do you have a way?"

Once again, hopeful eyes focused on Gret.

Gret fell silent.

I'd wanted to skip the intermediate steps and use Divine Arts to go straight to the answer, but that still won't work?

Divine Arts are far too limited. If there's an existing answer, you can copy it directly. If there isn't, you don't even get a hint of how to solve it...

Fine, then leave it to me. Let modern medicine handle this!