For rectal cancer, if it was only about the difficulty of this type of tumor surgery, it actually wouldn’t count as one of the more difficult ones among cancer surgeries for major organs. However, why was it that many ordinary hospitals would be incapable of performing rectal cancer surgery?

The main difficulty would be regarding the anus. The scary part about cancer was that it could spread and transfer. When performing any cancer surgery, it would be critically important to clear everything that was even suspected of harboring the possibility to allow the cancer to spread and transfer. Yet, this was far more difficult in rectal cancer due to the anus.

Doing everything cleanly was critically important in cancer surgery. Although the anus didn’t really seem significant, it would actually have a very large influence on a person’s quality of life. No matter how exquisitely skilled a doctor was, or how excellently constructed an artificial anus was, the artificial anus would never compare to the natural anus. For example, anastomosis infection would be incredibly troublesome to deal with. Also, the human body had its own ability to clean the anus. As long as a person was reasonably hygienic, the anus wouldn’t have much of a bad smell. However, that wouldn’t be the case with an artificial anus. No matter how you made an artificial anus, it would always smell of feces. Not only that, artificial anuses weren’t very convenient, since the anastomosis would be at the abdomen. Just try to imagine how inconvenient it would be!

Thus, the most difficult part of rectal cancer surgery was in planning on how to preserve the anus if at all possible.

For an ordinary person, as long as you were slightly active, you would have at least a minor amount of influence in a small city. However, that ordinary person would barely have any influence at all outside their hometown. Additionally, Chinese medical society was a rather closed loop. Unless you were in the medical field yourself, or had a very high level of influence, you wouldn’t even know who the best medical professionals in the field were.

Due to various benefits involved, everyone would say different things about who the best medical professionals were. The various major hospitals would all have their own areas of influence. Simply speaking, a provincial hospital’s expert doctors in various fields would typically monopolize the most major surgeries, with ordinary hospitals barely receiving such surgeries.

In northern China, the major surgeries would be taken care of by the Beijing hospitals. In northwestern China, it would be the hospitals in Sichuan and Shaanxi which had the greatest influence. For southern China, it would be Shanghai’s hospitals. The various earliest military hospitals were also doing quite well. But ever since the 1990s, the military hospitals on average were now only considered very good. Only a few military hospitals were still top-class.

Also, there was a large difference in the medical systems of port cities and mainland cities in China. Although the port city hospitals weren’t very large, they often had excellent medical abilities. There was also severe privatization going on there. There would be a severe difference in quality of medical treatment based on how much money you had.

Wang Zipeng helped the patient Chen Yun with the relevant detailed checkups and paperwork. The proctology department started making the pre-surgery preparations.

Chen Yun’s family also started making their own preparations. First of all, they were checking to see if they should have his rectal cancer surgery performed here at Chasu City Hospital or not. Everyone knew that the larger the hospital was, the higher the hospital’s level of medical abilities would be. Chen Yun was the breadwinner of his family. His family couldn’t afford to let just anyone perform his rectal cancer surgery. Thus, the Chen Family used all of their resources to try and learn more about rectal cancer surgeons.

However, the Chen Family soon found out that it was highly difficult for them to obtain any useful information about rectal cancer surgeons. Everyone would tell them different answers about who the best rectal cancer surgeons were. Actually, there wouldn’t be a large difference in skill for the top-level doctors. To explain simply, if there were many people who recommended a doctor for their abilities, it was likely that the doctor would probably be skilled enough. And for some medical fields, such as gastrointestinal medicine, there would be no mistaking that Guangzhou Province would have the most highly skilled gastroenterologists in all of China.

This was all because people in southern China liked to eat foods that weren’t fully cooked. This caused an especially high number of stomach problems for them. Just like in northwestern China which had many stomach problems due to the high fat diet here, southern China also had a season for an explosive amount of stomach problems. However, why was it that Guangzhou’s hospitals weren’t that famous? There was a certain explanation for this.

The medical field was actually a very stable job field to work in. However, Guangzhou was a bit different from other places in China. The turnover rate for doctors in Guangzhou was incredibly high. The people of Guangzhou were the type who loved to do the most for themselves that they possibly could. Once a Guangzhou doctor’s skill reached a certain level and they saw no more chance of personal development at the hospital, then it was common for the doctor to quit and go travel to somewhere else, even as far away as Africa, for further development and better income.

Chen Yun’s family contacted their relatives in Raptor City, and contacted an expert general surgeon there through them. However, the expert general surgeon immediately refused to come when he heard that the patient was in Chasu City. The top-level medical social circle of the border province was only so large. There would basically be no secrets about anything major that had happened. Chasu City Hospital had previously caused the incredibly rude Professor Chang to lose so much face over the liver tumor removal surgery. As a result, Professor Chang was no longer even able to keep his head held up high in Raptor City’s hospitals. In the end, Professor Chang departed from the border province to work elsewhere instead!

When doctors went to work or help at other hospitals, they most certainly didn’t want their face to be slapped during this process. Since there was already a super expert doctor at Chasu City Hospital, very few doctors from other hospitals would be willing to come here now. Not only would they be considered trying to steal work from the super expert doctor, there was also risk that they would have their face slapped. That would be such a bad deal!

Chen Yun’s family had a relative who was a teacher at Dee University. Although the teacher wasn’t a high-ranking or famous professor, the teacher still at least had some connections at Dee University. The teacher thus used his connections to ask about why the expert general surgeon had refused to come to Chasu City.

“Chasu City Hospital’s doctor won’t have any problem with performing this surgery. If I’m invited to go there, that won’t be giving their doctor any face. There’s no need!” The teacher finally heard the reason when he tried to invite Dee University’s vice principal to come to Chasu City. The teacher then told this to Chen Yun’s family, which made the family really happy and worried simultaneously!

They were happy because there was a super expert doctor at Chasu City Hospital, which meant that they didn’t need to run around looking for an expert doctor anymore. They were worried that they might not be able to invite this expert doctor to perform the surgery, as the smaller a place was, the more rules there would usually be! This was quite commonplace in China. For this, the Chen Family could only rely on the nurse Chen Yan to try and figure out who this super expert doctor was. Her discovery was that the clues all pointed towards Zhang Fan!

Originally, Chen Yan had thought that the expert doctor might have been referring to the general surgery director. This result made her really delighted. It wasn’t that the general surgery director Zhao Quanping was difficult to talk to, but rather that Zhang Fan was incredibly easy to talk to. Not only that, she also had a good relationship with Zhang Fan already. Still, since she had a formal request to make of him, she would have to go through all of the formalities, even if she and Zhang Fan were coworkers at the same hospital!

Nowadays, more and more people had their own personal vehicles. Zhang Fan no longer tried to hide his ownership of a high-class car anymore due to this, as it was obviously more convenient for him to simply drive. When Zhang Fan left the hospital today after his work shift, Chen Yan waved to him as she had been waiting for him at the hospital entrance!

“Are you going home now?” Chen Yan inquired. Her eyes were rather red and swollen from crying. She had a really good relationship with her older cousin, and had been crying together with the family members after learning about the rectal cancer diagnosis. Thus, her voice was also rather raspy.

“Yeah. You should also pay attention to your own health. Make sure to get aggressive treatment if you fall ill. Where are you going? I’ll give you a ride!” Zhang Fan tried to console Chen Yan.

“Thank you!” Chen Yan had originally prepared some words to say to him, but she was no longer able to say them when Zhang Fan tried his best to console her. She had to suppress her desire to cry again as she simply asked, “Who are you going to have perform my cousin’s surgery?”

“I will!” Zhang Fan said without even thinking.

Zhang Fan’s answer made Chen Yan absolutely certain now that he was indeed the expert doctor that people had been referring to. This was because there was only one possible reason for a resident doctor to be so confident as to take such a major surgery. Zhang Fan was absolutely certain of his own medical skills!

“I don’t even know how I should thank you. I just purchased two cartons of smokes for you. This is really so much trouble for you, Director Zhang, but please save my cousin,” Chen Yan said to Zhang Fan while being all teary-eyed.

“Just look at you, why cry? Do you really need to be like this since we’re already good friends? That’s looking down on me. Rest assured, I’ll definitely do my very best. How else am I supposed to face you again in the future! Hurry and take these smokes back. Right now is a time when your family really needs money. If you’re in financial trouble because of your cousin’s surgery, just let me know. I also have some savings myself,” Zhang Fan said as he parked his car, handed a tissue to Chen Yan, and kept consoling her.

“Okay, thank you!”

“Hey! Just look at you now. Do you still remember my first day in the cardiology department? You were just like an older sister who took such good care of me. What about you now? You’re being so distant from me! Just rest assured. Shall I take you home?”

“Yeah! Yeah! I can get off your car here. If you bring me back to the hospital like this, others will think that you were bullying me, which will be bad for your reputation! I know that you’re a really good person! I’ll be leaving now, and thank you!”

Sometimes, nice words could make you feel warm inside for a really long time!