Chapter 157 The Nanny's Niece's Counterattack 157...
However, the affiliated hospital of University A can still handle these cases. To be more precise, these patients are all under Lin Wei's care, because she is the only one in the entire hospital who can treat them. Fortunately, there are only three patients, so they can still manage.
One of the cases, like the young man from F state who was bitten by a bat, was discharged from the hospital after only a few days. The other two cases, like Yin Fang's husband, remain in a coma, and it is unknown when things will turn around.
Because of this, besides coming to the infectious disease department to administer medication regularly every day, she went on to do other things. After more than a month of laboratory research, she has successfully induced one stem cell to divide and proliferate into more than a dozen stem cells.
It just lacks a certain opportunity to differentiate from stem cells into central nervous system cells.
However, she already had an idea for an artificial neural scaffold and had produced three flawed versions. Although they met her minimum expectations, she felt they could be further optimized, so she didn't use them immediately.
During this time, she has been researching these things.
Of course, in addition to that, it also involves teaching infectious disease doctors how to administer medication to patients.
“Every patient’s situation is different, and different dosages of medication will have different effects on the body. We should minimize the damage that can be reduced.”
It's impossible for her to intervene every time a rabies patient comes in, right?
The infectious disease doctor only vaguely understood, because dosage is a subjective matter without a fixed standard, making it easy to lose control. Despite learning from Lin Wei during this time, he still couldn't figure out the dosage of the medication, when to increase it, and when to decrease it.
Lin Wei rejected his prescription eight out of ten times.
"When administering medication, you need to know what harm it will cause to the patient and what results you want to achieve."
"For example, if I want the immune system to function and produce antibodies, the amount of virus cannot be too high, otherwise it will directly suppress the immune system and prevent the production of antibodies. But it also cannot be too low, otherwise it will not stimulate the immune system to function. So the amount of virus to kill must be carefully controlled."
"Under certain circumstances, it is possible to sacrifice normal cells, but if you sacrifice them, you have to supply them. Either you have to induce cell growth or you have to transplant cells. Otherwise, if there are too few normal cells, it will also damage many tissues in the body." Lin Wei explained the knowledge to them bit by bit.
For example, how much immunity can one dose of an immunosuppressant boost in a patient, what viral load should be maintained at that point, and what are the differences between the elderly and young adults? It's simply not something that can be easily learned.
Because she wanted to train them, Lin Wei let them discuss how much medicine to give them for the next month, and then show her the final result.
If it doesn't work, send it back and let them discuss it again. If there's not enough time, she'll administer the medication herself.
It must be said that this growth is quite rapid.
And so, a month later, Yin Fang's husband finally showed a slight change.
Lin Wei detected that the virus on his body was not as active this time. Just like with Wattkel before, the number of viruses was decreasing.
This is a good thing.
However, after Lin Wei discovered this, she didn't rush to tell the family. Instead, she wanted to see what the patient would be like when the rabies virus completely disappeared.
How could she not know the strength of the medication she administered? It's not impossible that she might become unable to care for herself or develop mental impairment. If that happens, even though she survived, it wouldn't be a good thing for her family.
Just like a person in a vegetative state who needs a lot of nursing care for a year in the hospital, giving up is not an option, but not giving up is also not an option.
If that were the outcome, even Lin Wei would be shocked when she saw it, let alone her family. So she wanted to take a look first.
Lin Wei's prediction was correct; after the patient stopped taking the sedatives and anti-syncope drugs, the situation was not optimistic.
Although the patient did not experience drowsiness or coma, various nerves were damaged, including eye movement disorders, trigeminal neuralgia, difficulty swallowing, choking when drinking, paralysis and weakness on one side of the body, and mental confusion.
In other words, the CPU burned out.
Yin Fang was initially happy that her husband had woken up, but when she saw this scene, she couldn't smile anymore. Although she knew about the side effects of the treatment, she hadn't expected it to be like this. What Lin Wei had told her earlier wasn't an exaggeration at all.
It would be a lie to say I wasn't disappointed, but after calming down, I could accept it; at least I survived.
Just being alive is good, just being alive is good, I even feel a little fortunate.
However, the families of the other two rabies patients were not as optimistic as she was when they saw this scene, and their hearts sank.
If this is the outcome after treatment, what difference does it make whether we save them or not? A person who cannot move independently and needs care, even if they can take care of them for a day or two, who can do it for a year or two? Not to mention that their family is not wealthy.
Such expensive medication, used every day, who could afford to take it?
Whether it was financial pressure or other practical factors, they painfully gave up treatment. Can we say they didn't love their families? But they also had to think about the survivors; they couldn't let one person destroy the whole family, could they?
When Lin Wei learned that they were taking the patient home, she paused for a moment. Although she could understand, she still felt a little regretful. If they could have held on, the patient wouldn't have died, but if they left, the patient would definitely die.
This involves two lives.
But sometimes people have no choice but to succumb to reality, and there's nothing that can be done about it.
Lin Wei and the other doctors sighed, resigned to their fate. She had told those foreigners that she would develop a treatment, but how could anyone believe just words?
Given the long treatment time, it's understandable that they might want to give up.
Thinking that such a thing could very well happen again, and not wanting people to have hope only to be disappointed, she clearly explained the pros and cons, as well as the possible costs, on the official WeChat account of the A University Affiliated Hospital.
A rough estimate puts it at over a million, mainly because the immunomodulatory agents are expensive. Buying them individually isn't particularly expensive, as they're good value for money. However, these medications need to be used long-term, making the total cost very high. Even neurotrophic factors are the same.
In conclusion, rabies is curable, but it is not easy to cure, and the price is not yet affordable for the general public.
However, Lin Wei felt that this method was sufficient. After all, most people would get a rabies vaccine after being bitten by a dog or some livestock, and only a minority of people would get rabies. If they didn't want to spend so much money on treatment, they should just get a rabies vaccine after being bitten by a dog.
Anyone would know which to choose between a treatment cost of one or two thousand yuan and one million yuan, right?
This resonated with everyone: "Indeed, it's already quite good that we can treat it now. There are clearly preventative methods, so if people don't get vaccinated, then they deserve to spend millions on treatment."
"If you can't even afford two thousand yuan, then don't blame the later expenses for being even higher. If the million-yuan treatment fee is really unavoidable, you can sell the house, borrow from others, or buy some insurance, or get some financial assistance, and maybe you can raise the money. But if you lose your life, it's really over. So although one million yuan is expensive, it's still acceptable. At least it's much better than before when there was no drug treatment."
One cannot have it all.
Ultimately, since the vaccine came out, only about a hundred people in Huaguo get rabies every year, which is a minority. Lin Wei still felt that there was no need to waste time on this disease.
While she eventually developed a simpler method, her intuition told her it was a very long road. She would continue her research if tens of thousands of people were infected each year, but with only a few hundred, the gains wouldn't outweigh the losses.
In other words, she didn't feel that spending several years on this disease was worthwhile, just to develop a cheaper and more affordable treatment.
In that time, she could have researched several diseases.
Therefore, Lin Wei's research on rabies treatment came to an end. She continued with the previous treatment plan, allowing patients to develop antibodies first, and then treating the side effects of the drugs and the virus.
This is obviously a long process.
So far, Lin Wei's treatment of Jiang Maoxue has only involved strengthening the neurotrophic factor and providing some nutritional support.
Further treatment will have to wait until the stem cells successfully differentiate into central nervous system cells before any further plans can be made.
However, one thing is true: if central nervous system cells can regenerate, then there would be fewer restrictions on the conditions for waking up a person in a vegetative state.
This means that neural cell transplantation no longer requires donors. Stem cells can be extracted from the patient, differentiated, and then transplanted into the brain of a person in a vegetative state. This would be another breakthrough in the technology for reviving people in a vegetative state.
Because of this, Lin Wei accelerated the research process and finally succeeded in differentiating stem cells into central nerve cells half a month later.
After several experiments, she determined that this was the condition for differentiation, which was to produce a large number of nerve cells.
In contrast to stem cell transplantation, which may cause rejection, nerve cells have been proven to be transplantable after special treatment.
It can only be said that all medical fields are interconnected. The treatment of some diseases can be interchangeable with that of other diseases under certain circumstances. Lin Wei has understood this very well through her many studies.
Upon hearing this news, everyone was filled with anticipation for the upcoming treatment. "Dr. Lin, is the next step to perform a craniotomy and nerve transplant?" the infectious disease doctor asked.
Lin Wei shook her head. "No, vegetative patients already have traumatic brain injury, so nerve transplantation can be performed at the same time as the traumatic brain injury repair, but this patient does not need it."
"That's why we used minimally invasive surgery this time."
The technique is a bit difficult, but it causes less damage to the body. His brain tissue is fine; to operate on it would be an overreaction.
It's important to understand that if nerve cells can be extracted using minimally invasive techniques, then they can also be transplanted back using minimally invasive techniques.
Because of this, she directly invited the foreigners who were exchanging ideas in neurosurgery, as well as some doctors, to come and watch how it was performed.
This is also a skill they need to learn.
Upon learning of this, a foreigner exclaimed in disbelief, "Lin, you're amazing! You've found a new breakthrough so quickly!"
They had only just learned how to extract and transplant nerve cells, and she had already figured out how to differentiate nerve cells from stem cells. That's amazing!
Other doctors at the affiliated hospital in City A shared the same thought. However, it would be a lie to say that the techniques they had learned were useless, since they were still needed for nerve transplantation.
On the operating table, a group of people watched intently. But in reality, such a difficult minimally invasive procedure only takes twenty minutes to complete.
After they've finished watching, their eyes will understand, but their hands won't.
There's a slight difference between extracting nerve cells and nerve cell transplantation. The former simply involves extracting tissue, while the latter involves transplanting cells. This requires two things: 1. The tissue must not carry any bacteria or microorganisms. 2. The transplanted cells must not be lost during the transplantation process.
This still presents certain difficulties, especially the second point.
However, for Lin Wei, this was a piece of cake. She was currently working step by step to revive the patients' damaged functions, promoting nerve repair through nerve cells. What could be repaired would be repaired; what couldn't be repaired would be replaced once she developed a satisfactory artificial nerve scaffold.
So the patient's condition improved day by day. At first, it was just a gradual return of consciousness, and he was no longer delirious. Then some functions were restored, such as being able to move his fingers and eat on his own.
As Yin Fang watched him get better day by day, she cried tears of joy, "That's wonderful." These past few months had been the most difficult time for her, but thankfully, thankfully he woke up.
At this moment, Jiang Maoxue looked at her, puzzled, and asked, "What's wrong with me?" When the doctor gave him his diagnosis, he was already not fully conscious, so he didn't know what had happened.
Upon hearing this, Yin Fang slapped him. "You were bitten by a dog and got rabies. Dr. Lin used a lot of medication to save you. Otherwise, I would never have seen you again, and Nannan would have no father." There was also a hint of resentment in her voice, blaming him for not getting vaccinated.
Jiang Maoxue quickly asked, "You're here, but where's Nannan?" Nannan was their daughter.
Yin Fang: "I arranged for her to board at school. Otherwise, without their parents' help, how could she manage both of them?"
Only after she felt relieved did Yin Fang tell him about the hardships and horrors of the treatment process over the past few months, saying that the hopeless wait was the most agonizing part.
"If I hadn't trusted Dr. Lin, I really wouldn't have been able to persevere."
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