Lin Lin stared at Damei with wide eyes and asked, "Huh?"
She felt her heart skip a beat as the news exploded in her mind.
Although angle grinders are also a type of medical equipment, they are often used in bone surgery to grind the broken ends of bones to make them smoother, which is beneficial for fracture reduction and the installation of fixation devices (such as steel plates and screws).
However, the horrifying images of using an angle grinder to cut human skin kept appearing in her mind uncontrollably. Each image was like a heavy hammer, hitting her medical knowledge hard.
But when this news came out of Damei's mouth, it seemed so absurd yet true.
After confirming with Damei again and again, the scene fell into a nearly dead silence.
Lin Lin could clearly hear his own breathing, as if the whole world had stopped at this moment, and only the fear brought by the angle grinder usage scene in his mind spread in the air.
After a brief silence, Lin Lin tried hard to adjust his emotions.
During this silence, her mind was working rapidly, with countless thoughts and speculations interweaving in her mind.
At this moment, she coughed twice, breaking the oppressive silence, and asked Damei, "Did the subsequent tissue extraction go smoothly?"
Damei shook her head helplessly and replied: "It's not going well."
Her eyes were filled with exhaustion and frustration. "Although we successfully opened an incision on their bodies using the angle grinder, the fat beneath the incision...how can I describe it to you?"
"So the tissue that needed to be sent for inspection wasn't extracted?" Lin Lin asked. Her heart sank slightly, and she felt that the complexity of the matter was far beyond her imagination.
Damei said: "The extraction was done, but it took a long time and the amount was small. I don't know how many experiments it can support." After saying that, she seemed to be overwhelmed and sighed heavily, which contained too much helplessness and worry.
Lin Lin frowned, wondering, "It takes a long time? The quantity is small?"
Damei began to explain in detail: "After opening the wound, all the subcutaneous fat is exposed. At first glance, the color, shape, distribution, etc. are all normal to the naked eye."
"The fat is a soft yellow, just like normal fat tissue in the human body, without any unusual color or texture."
"But we couldn't separate it. The forceps couldn't hold it, and we couldn't fix it."
"Those toothed forceps were like slippery loaches when they encountered the fat of these two patients. They were completely ineffective."
"Every time I tried to grab it, the forceps would slip through the fat, as if the fat had some mysterious power that repelled the foreign instruments."
"After many unsuccessful attempts, we decided to stop fighting it and instead extract the fat tissue that was exposed on the surface, but that still didn't go very well."
"The process was like fighting an invisible enemy, with every step full of difficulties and obstacles."
Lin Lin asked anxiously, "Just how bad is this going?"
Damei sighed and continued to explain, "Normal cutting is useless, but it's not like the skin on the body, it's as hard as armor."
"Can you imagine? The patient's subcutaneous fat is soft, as soft as freshly made tofu, and it will dent if you press it lightly."
"But no matter what knife you use, you can't cut it open. Even the angle grinder you use to cut the skin in the beginning doesn't work. The more you fight it, the more the instrument in your hand sinks into it and you can't pull it out."
"And the functions that those instruments could normally perform seemed to be swallowed up by the fat, disappearing in that seemingly soft yellow ocean."
"After trying many methods, we finally found a way to successfully extract it."
Having said that, Damei couldn't help but pause.
Lin Lin also asked anxiously: "What method do you want to use? Why are you so hesitant..."
"I use a curette to scrape the fat little by little, but when scraping, the contact between the curette and the fat feels strange, like digging into a pile of sticky mud and sand."
"Every movement of the curette required tremendous strength, and the amount of fat tissue scraped off was pitifully small. It also had a strange stickiness, clinging to the curette as if it didn't want to leave."
Lin Lin's frown deepened. She stared at Damei with a serious look in her eyes. "This situation is so strange. I've never encountered this before."
"The characteristics of these fats are completely inconsistent with common sense. Could it be that the patient has some special physical condition or disease?"
Damei nodded and said, "We have the same suspicion."
"We have arranged a comprehensive examination of the patient's blood and other relevant indicators, but the progress is still very slow. We hope to find some clues."
Lin Lin thought for a moment and asked, "I just heard you mention that two patients had the same problem when their tissues were extracted. Did these two patients know each other?"
Damei was stunned for a moment, as if this question hit the blind spot of her thinking, and a hint of enlightenment flashed in her eyes.
She replied: "This... because there was a certain interval between the two patients' visits to the hospital, and the previous focus was on the symptoms and the difficulties of extracting tissue, we really didn't pay much attention to whether there was any overlap between them."
She frowned slightly and continued, "When the first case of this kind of special situation occurred, we thought it was just an isolated incident, but we didn't expect a second case to appear right after."
"That's when I realized the strangeness of the illness and the seriousness of the problem. That's why I wanted to talk to you about it and get your advice."
"This situation is so rare that I now wonder if there is some factor we haven't discovered yet, such as a new virus or environmental factors, that caused these two seemingly isolated patients to develop the same difficult condition."
Lin Lin nodded slightly, his eyes serious: "You have a point."
"We can't just limit ourselves to individual examinations anymore. We have to re-examine all the information about these two patients, including their living environments, the people they interacted with, their dietary preferences, and so on. Even the slightest similarity could be the key to solving the mystery."
"Okay, I'll go reorganize the information right away." After saying that, Damei left the meeting room in a hurry.
Her steps were quick and powerful, and every step seemed like a race against time.
She knew very well that in such a complex and difficult medical situation, every minute wasted meant that the "truth" would be revealed one minute later.
However, this wasted time will also make subsequent diagnosis and treatment more difficult.
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