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 病退：我的医学科研生涯 |
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芦笛
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作者：芦笛 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
病退：我的医学科研生涯
芦笛
刚才进来看了一眼，见阿随说疯话（可不是“风话”——flirting），说什么回城只需用萝卜刻公章就行了。你把我党也想得太白痴，把强大的无产阶级专政也想得太温柔敦厚了。我党若真有那么好糊弄，那也不会有许多女知青向军代表献上贞操，男知青自残肢体的人间惨剧了。老实说，我办病退成功算是很少见的。如我这种靠狂热钻研医学而能轻松回城的，大概全国也没几个，就连大夫家庭出身的知青也未必想得出来。光是我本人的经历，就足以印证培根的名言：Knowledge is power。
这里把《黑崽子》的一章摘在下面，懒得翻译了，有兴趣的同志凑合着看看吧。我自己刚才看了一遍倒觉得挺逗的。
Chapter 14. Long march to the factory (1)
…………
So it appeared that I needed to fall ill before my food ran out. But what kind of disease should I have?
The first thing that occurred to me was hepatitis. It was a natural inspiration as Stocky Fellow was supposedly having this problem. Thanks to him, I learnt the importance of GPT in making a diagnosis. But none of us had the faintest idea what this GPT was.
In this situation, the best strategy was to follow Chairman Mao's teaching and “learn how to conduct a war by waging it”. So I went to a hospital and got registered for a consultation. Since the Cultural Revolution, the systems in hospitals had become greatly simplified. An outpatient normally kept a little book for his medical records. Every time he saw a doctor, he should produce the little book in order for the doctor to know of his disease history. This was great, as the records were under my control and doctors could only see what I wanted them to see.
I told the doctor I had suffered acute hepatitis which had turned chronic. I still felt weak and had no appetite, though the jaundice had gone. The doctor examined me and wrote down the result in the little book. He then gave me a request form for biochemical tests.
A few days later, I went back to collect the test report, as it was under my care like the other records. Everything was normal. The GPT was only 50 units, 100 lower than I should have. The physical examination was not encouraging either. The doctor had written in the little book that “the liver is not enlarged". But soon I got an idea. I took out my pen and added two strokes to the character which meant “not”. Now the sentence became: “the liver is still enlarged”.
One week later, I went back to the hospital and saw another doctor. After she examined me, she said:
“Well, I cannot feel your liver now. It looks like you are getting better.”
“Indeed.” I said gratefully. “The treatment has worked. I feel much better now.”
“Let's see if the other things have come back to normal as well.” With this, she gave me another test request.
I spent the rest of the day thinking of a way to beat biochemistry. I was just about to give up when I suddenly saw a light. Why did they ask me not to take food before the test? It must be because food would interfere with the tests and give false results. By eating a large amount of fat, perhaps I could increase the amount of GPT in my blood.
The next morning, before I went to the hospital, I took the lard bowl out of the cupboard. With my eyes closed, I swallowed a few spoons of lard. It did not taste so bad. I carried on until I realized I had almost finished the monthly ration for the whole family and Mother would have nothing for cooking.
Like a good wine, the lard I swallowed only showed its power a while after I had taken it in. On my way to the hospital, I had to stop many times, trying my best not to throw up. By the time I got to the lab, I had become a genuinely sick man. I really hoped my suffering would be worthwhile when I had bad diarrhea during the following days.
But once again, everything was normal and the GPT was only 80. I had to resort to my pen again and the figure became 180.
The doctor was rather pleased when she read the test report.
“Well, it does seem that we are doing pretty well. See, your liver is no longer swollen and most of the tests are normal. Only one item is a bit higher.”
I thanked her most sincerely, saying that I myself had not expected to get better so soon. They did perform a miracle. Still, I said, I tended to feel tired, especially because my workload was rather heavy. Did she think a few days sick leave would aid recovery?
She concurred and gave me two weeks leave. The certificate made clear I was suffering from chronic hepatitis.
I rushed to see the cadre in the Re-education Office of the Municipal Revolutionary Committee and asked for exemption from the “re-education”. But he was not impressed. Again he told me he had no business with a peasant, much less with a sick one. He could not exempt me, as my certificate was only for two weeks leave. I argued that it would take years for patients of chronic hepatitis to recover. Even if he could not exempt me, at least he should give me food for survival while I was receiving treatment. But he just turned to another petitioner, refusing to talk to me any more.
Thus, in order to get food rations for the next month, I would have to go back to hospital again. But after the lard experiment, I had lost faith in my ability to handle chemistry. Apart from the involvement of chemistry, hepatitis turned out to be pretty nasty, as one could not blow up one's liver like a balloon. Resorting to a pen would be risky as I might end up in jail if I got caught. What I really needed was something which could not be detected by physical examination. Tuberculosis seemed to meet this requirement well. I knew patients with TB had calcium salts deposited in their lungs which prevented X-rays from passing through. It seemed easy enough to reproduce this phenomenon outside the body.
I bought a pack of expensive cigarettes and took the aluminum foil out. Using a small coin as a template, I carefully tore a small disc out of the foil then put the disc in my pocket. A few days later, I took out the disc and found its appearance much less artificial. Its edges were no longer clear-cut and dots of aluminum had randomly fallen off the paper in some places. I stuck it onto my back with flour paste. However, only after this had been done did it occur to me that I should remember the precise position of the disc so that I could reproduce it if I was examined again. So I stood with my back towards the mirror, trying to see and memorize its location on my back. This proved pretty awkward, but I could not put the disc on the front of my chest. If the doctor did a physical examination on me, he would see the disc immediately.
But the doctor did not bother to examine me. She only requested roentgenoscopy. As X-ray films were often in short supply, outpatients were normally examined with roentgenoscopy in which the doctor observes the image on a fluorescence screen generated by X-rays after it passes through the patient's body.
As soon as the doctor started looking at the screen, he let out a loud curse:
“What the hell is THAT?” He moved the X-ray lens up and down, turning my body this way and that.
“What?”
“The thing! There is a large spot on your back! What the hell is it? It doesn't look like a button.”
Panic gripped me. I had neglected a small fact in my plan. Although the image on the screen was two dimensional, by turning my body before the X-ray lens, it was not difficult to determine the position of the disc in the third dimension. How very stupid I had been!
But there was no time for regret. The doctor switched off the machine, turned on the light and took off his lead apron to examine my back with his eyes. But he found nothing there. I had taken the disc off and had hidden it in my hand when he had been occupied with turning off the machine.
He switched on the machine again. This time the spot disappeared from the screen. He cursed even more loudly, but he had nothing better to do than to fill in the report.
After two unsuccessful experiments, I learnt my lesson. As Confucius said, “He who studies without thinking becomes confused and he who thinks without studying gets frustrated.” So I went to a bookstore to get myself some education. I picked up a book about laboratory tests. Before long, I had another piece of inspiration. This time I decided the best thing was a bleeding duodenal ulcer.
I was pretty familiar with the symptoms of this illness because of my friend. Also I knew that testing the patient's stools for occult blood was the main method that hospitals used to make the diagnosis, as barium was in short supply. The book told me about the principle of the test. Due to internal bleeding, the patient's stools contained peroxidase, an enzyme released from white blood cells, promoting oxidation. Thus, by adding hydrogen peroxide along with benzidine into the patient's stool sample, the enzyme present in the sample would promote hydrogen peroxide to oxidize benzidine and turn it blue. The darkness of the color indicated the amount of the enzyme present which correlated with the seriousness of the bleeding.
Although I did not have the enzyme, I could replace it with a strong oxidant. I got some potassium chromate from my brother's friend who worked in chemical factory. The compound looked orange and mixed well with the color of the stool sample.
The lab technician was pretty hygiene-conscious. Instead of accepting the matchbox which contained the stool, she asked me to open the box and hold it in my hand. Standing at a safe distance, wearing a thick gauze mask, she dropped a few drops of some colorless liquid from a pipette onto the stool. I felt tremendously proud when I saw the stool instantly turning dark blue. I got you at last! I exclaimed in my heart.
But the technician exclaimed at the same time: “Oh, Heaven! I'll be damned!” As if she had just seen a devil, she dropped the pipette and ran away into the next room, leaving me standing there like an idiot, holding the honey box in my hand.
I immediately found out what had gone wrong as I overheard the heated conversation next door. Talking to her colleague, the lady was too excited to mind the volume of her voice:
“Strange! Can you believe it? I only added benzidine and I haven't added hydrogen peroxide yet, but the specimen turned blue! I've never run across such a case in all my life! What kind of stool is it? Strange!”
I was in panic again. For a moment, I wanted to flee. But I knew it would make things even worse. I forced myself to stay calm. Relax, I kept telling myself, they would never figure it out. They had long forgotten what they had learnt at school. Even a professor would not be able to find out the truth, as his brain, like those of all other “intellectuals”, was bound to be stuffed full of nothing but confessions.
Twenty minutes passed, yet the ladies next door were still engaged in their academic discussion, excitedly exploring the mystery of the rare case. I decided it was a safe time to retreat. So I shouted my complaint at the door:
“Doctor! How much longer should I hold this shit box? You know this is not a nice thing to have in your hand for ages!”
After a while, the lady shouted back: “You can throw it into the toilet!”
Then I left, never going back to that hospital again.
Only afterwards did I realize how pedantic I had been. The easiest way would have been to puncture a finger with a needle and squeeze a few drops of blood into the stool and that would be it. Nonetheless, the lesson I learnt proved pretty useful as it gave me another piece of inspiration leading to the discovery of the most ideal disease - nephritis. The beauty of this wonderful disease is that its diagnosis relies heavily on the lab test result. I did not have to blow up my internal organs, neither did I need any X-ray examination. Most conveniently, unlike the blood sample, the urine sample was collected by myself and could be processed in any way I liked.
I punctured my finger with a needle and squeezed some blood into the urine specimen in a glass bottle. Then I broke an egg and added some egg white to the specimen. I took the bottle to a hospital. Everything worked beautifully as I had anticipated. I was diagnosed as a patient with severe chronic nephritis, a blissful illness on which I settled happily ever since, until I had to become healthy (which would be much easier than the other way round) again so as to be enrolled to a factory later on.
So, as a Chinese proverb goes, “even an iron pestle can be ground down to a needle in a persistent hand.” With persistence, I finally beat medical sciences and worked a miracle of turning a perfectly healthy person into a hopeless patient.
作者：芦笛 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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