Chapter 307: Unusual Diagnoses at Tuyu Hospital

The outlook for sepsis isn’t as optimistic as most people imagine. In elderly patients and young children, the mortality rate can reach over 40%. In real clinical practice, it sometimes even hits 50% or higher.

The earlier this illness is detected, the better the chances.

It’s crucial to eliminate the original and migrated infection sites as soon as possible and shut down the source of the pathogens.

From there, strict antibiotic and anti-infection treatments need to be administered.

If complications arise, like pneumonia or acute kidney failure, then targeted treatments for those symptoms are also necessary.

Any injury from rusty metal, nails, or animal scratches or bites calls for an immediate tetanus vaccine.

It’s actually the most effective and affordable way to prevent sepsis.

A single vaccine shot only costs a few dozen yuan, but this little girl’s condition is already severe. If we can save her life, that’s a win. The treatment costs are sure to be sky-high.

If her condition worsens during hospitalization, or she develops serious complications, there’s no doubt she’ll need the ICU—and those bills can get downright terrifying.

Money takes a backseat—the most important thing is saving her life.

Don’t be fooled by how advanced modern medicine seems. There are still many cases where even doctors can’t do anything.

Every day at Tuyu Hospital, the dead are sent to the funeral home.

Just as the paperwork for the little girl’s hospitalization was finished, a middle-aged couple walked over.

The woman looked about thirty, dressed fashionably.

Her belly stuck out high and round.

Zhou Can didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Some women just have a particularly prominent lower belly due to lack of exercise.

In more extreme cases, some women’s stomachs get so big they look pregnant. If you dare suggest they’re expecting, they’d get mad at you in a second.

Beer bellies aren’t just a man’s problem these days. Women who are a little older and slack with self-care can easily end up with a pregnant-looking belly.

“Doctor, can you take a look at a case of male pregnancy?”

The man seemed embarrassed—it was his wife who spoke up for him.

“Male pregnancy?”

Zhou Can looked completely baffled. He’d already seen his fair share of bizarre patients, like that one who used a tube to siphon food out of his own stomach. But this? This was next-level.

If a man could get pregnant, then a rooster could lay eggs.

“Here’s the thing—I’m over six months pregnant. I feel perfectly fine, but for some reason, my husband is having morning sickness. His belly’s swelling day by day, and he’s even developed stretch marks on his abdomen and thighs. At first, we thought it was just a coincidence, but the stretch marks convinced us that maybe, just maybe, my husband is actually pregnant.”

As she spoke, her husband sat across from Zhou Can, head lowered, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.

A man getting pregnant—what a world.

Naturally, the patient himself felt pretty embarrassed.

“Did you get checked out at another hospital?” Zhou Can kept a serious expression, hoping to minimize the patient’s embarrassment.

Ji You had worked as a nurse for quite a while, but she’d never heard of anything this strange.

She eyed the male patient curiously.

Even with a loose jacket on, his rounded belly was hard to miss.

“We did, once. I was too embarrassed to tell the doctor the truth, so I just said my stomach felt uncomfortable and got an ultrasound. Everything came back normal.”

Summoning up his courage, the man finally looked at Zhou Can.

“When did all this start?” Zhou Can asked.

“It began when my wife was about two or three months pregnant. I started feeling nauseous eating greasy food and felt wiped out all the time. Later, I realized all my symptoms were just like early pregnancy reactions in women. I still couldn’t believe a guy like me could be pregnant, but as the days passed, my belly just kept getting bigger.”

Even the man telling these wild details couldn’t quite believe it himself.

And he looked genuinely troubled.

“It’s gotten even scarier lately. My belly grew even more, and I found stretch marks on my abdomen and thighs. I never used to like sour foods, but now I can’t get enough of them.”

The man pulled up his shirt, and sure enough—

His belly was crisscrossed with purplish-brown marks.

“The world’s a strange place, nothing’s impossible. Let me give you a physical exam first.”

Zhou Can examined the man and found that pressing on his belly felt almost exactly like a pregnant woman’s.

After the exam, he ordered an abdominal ultrasound, a full blood panel, and a urine test.

Those three tests should clarify whether or not a man is pregnant.

For women, a urine test is usually enough to confirm pregnancy. Zhou Can was certain this man wasn’t actually pregnant, but he worried there might be a tumor or something.

So he ordered an ultrasound just in case.

It wasn’t long before the man returned with his test results.

Zhou Can checked the ultrasound images first. Just like the last hospital, there was no sign of a fetus or tumor—everything looked normal.

The urine test also showed no sign of pregnancy.

The point of a urine test for pregnancy is to check for human chorionic gonadotropin in the urine.

Looking at the blood test, a few hormone levels were abnormally high.

Immediately, Zhou Can thought of a syndrome he’d only ever read about in medical textbooks—Couvade Syndrome.

He was now pretty much certain what the man had.

Most women in their first couple months of pregnancy experience some ‘morning sickness’—nausea, dizziness, fatigue, and poor appetite.

That’s a normal physiological response to pregnancy.

But sometimes, when a wife gets pregnancy symptoms, her husband gets them too.

Once the pregnant wife’s symptoms go away, so do the husband’s.

This odd phenomenon, where the husband gets sick while the wife is pregnant, is medically known as ‘Couvade Syndrome.’

To put it simply—this is a psychosomatic disorder triggered by psychological factors in men.

It might be anxiety, worry, stress, or something similar.

“Mr. Mo, first of all congratulations—nothing in your tests indicates that you’re pregnant. Multiple medical checks confirm this.”

Zhou Can delivered the results with a straight face.

“But then why is my belly growing, why do I have stretch marks, why did I have nausea and cravings for sour food before? How do you explain that?”

Clearly, the patient wasn’t buying it.

Combined with Zhou Can looking so young, the patient’s doubts only grew.

“There are two main reasons for your symptoms. First, psychological factors—a lot of men’s minds go through big shifts when they learn their wife is pregnant. Especially first-time dads get hit with excitement, uncertainty, worries, and so on. Sometimes they even want to share their wife’s emotional burden. All this swirls together and sparks mental changes.”

“Second, physiological changes. Your blood tests showed some hormone imbalances, which can affect your hormones and lead to these pregnancy-like responses—belly swelling, nausea, that sort of thing. I can prescribe something to help with anxiety and address the psychological roots of the issue.”

Zhou Can explained the cause from both angles.

“If you can let go of your psychological baggage, your symptoms will resolve on their own. If you’re still feeling anxious and nervous because you care so much about your wife or are excited about becoming a dad, that’s okay too. Once your wife gives birth, you should get better naturally.”

At the heart of it, this comes down to mental stress.

Only the person who tied the bell can untie it.

As a doctor, the best he could do was help relieve the patient’s anxiety and untangle the knots.

Some patients are stubborn, trusting only themselves and refusing to hear the doctor’s advice.

“So what’s this called, exactly?”

After Zhou Can’s explanation, the man seemed somewhat persuaded.

But judging by his face, he’d still want to look it up himself.

“This is called Couvade Syndrome in the medical field.”

Zhou Can replied, filling out a prescription as he spoke.

The man lowered his head and started fiddling with his phone—probably searching online.

While he looked it up, Zhou Can finished the prescription and medical advice without pressuring him.

He just waited patiently, his face calm, giving the man time to educate himself online.

“Honey, I just checked—it’s actually a real thing! The symptoms match me almost exactly. Looks like the doctor was right all along!”

The man promptly updated his wife after searching online.

Zhou Can couldn’t help but feel a bit helpless.

Honestly, it always sounded like the doctor was making stuff up—was the doctor going to lie about this?

When patients keep doubting and fact-checking the doctor, it can get a little tiring.

But no matter how annoyed doctors get, they have to accept it. It’s just how things are nowadays.

“When you get home, try to stay focused on your studies or work. If you feel anxious or nervous, try doing something you enjoy to take your mind off it—like playing chess, fishing, painting, or calligraphy.”

Zhou Can used this moment to reassure the patient further.

His goal was to help the patient get through this mental block.

Plenty of adult men love things like mahjong, poker, or online gaming, but as a doctor, he couldn’t exactly recommend those—those habits aren’t great for one’s health or family.

“Alright, thank you so much, doctor!”

The man was now genuinely grateful—it seemed that reading about the condition himself made him accept Zhou Can’s diagnosis.

He took the prescription and headed off to pay and pick up his medication.

With another patient seen, Zhou Can grabbed his water bottle, twisted off the cap, and took a big drink to moisten his throat.

Being on duty wasn’t as easy as he’d thought.

When there were no patients, he couldn’t wait for someone to come in. Now, with more and more patients, he just felt so tired.

He felt like he was working on an assembly line—there was no break at all.

As long as a patient came, he had to see them.

Still, being able to help lift his patients out of misery felt meaningful.

Before he knew it, a whole day had passed.

Thanks to Mu Qing’s interview, the previous awkward spells of sitting around waiting for patients were gone. After a busy day, Ji You counted it up—he’d seen seventeen patients in total.

A new personal record.

The types of patients he saw were all over the map, so he finally got a taste of how tough it is to run a consultation by himself.

Earlier, when there weren’t many patients, he just didn’t notice these problems.

After work, Zhou Can didn’t rush to the cafeteria with the specialists. Instead, he glanced over at the female reporter, Mu Qing, who was packing up her laptop and belongings, about to head home.

“Ji You, go ahead and grab dinner first! I need to go apologize to the reporter.”

He didn’t try to hide anything from Ji You.

“Alright! Want me to get your food for you?” she asked, concerned.

“No, no, you go eat. For all I know, I might end up bleeding tonight to treat her to a fancy dinner.”

His comment made Ji You giggle behind her hand.

For someone as wealthy as Zhou Can, treating someone to dinner was nothing.

He walked over and stopped about two meters from Mu Qing.

Even as she tidied up, Mu Qing immediately sensed his presence. She just kept her head down and packed up silently, her face cold.

It was obvious she was still upset about what happened that morning.

She hadn’t forgiven him yet.

The cameraman, Old Qin, glared at Zhou Can. “Kid, do you have any idea how much work Mu Qing put in for you? She’s been through a lot to help you out.”

“Old Qin, don’t say another word. He doesn’t care about our efforts anyway.”

Mu Qing cut Old Qin off with a frosty tone.

“He’ll never know how much you did unless someone tells him. No point scolding him otherwise.”

Old Qin clearly felt it was unfair for Mu Qing to be treated poorly.

Seeing a colleague get the short end of the stick made him furious.

“Mu Qing, I’m sorry. I didn’t think before I spoke this morning and hurt your feelings. I promise I meant no harm—I just didn’t want you to keep chasing interviews with me.”

Zhou Can apologized sincerely.

Plus, judging from what Old Qin had said, Mu Qing had gone out of her way to help publicize him—possibly even at personal cost.

When it came to news and PR, Zhou Can really didn’t know much.

But from Old Qin’s angry tone and look, it was clear Mu Qing had been through a lot for him.

“I don’t need your apology! And I won’t interview you again, or follow you around ever again.”

Mu Qing’s tone was icy.

Her beautiful, captivating face was drawn tight and so cold it could freeze the air.

“Uh… I really am sorry! It’s almost dinnertime—why don’t you and your coworkers join me for a meal? Since I made you angry, do whatever you want—order the most expensive thing you like.”

Zhou Can’s guilt ran deep.

He was the sentimental type—not someone who could brush things off with ease.

Right now, he just wanted to make things right and earn Mu Qing’s forgiveness.

“Not interested!”

She shot back with three freezing words.

“Come on, just give me a chance! See? I know I messed up. I’ve never kept anyone in my debt—otherwise, I can’t sleep at night.”

Zhou Can kept up his reassuring smile, trying to make peace.

You have to apologize sincerely.

The angrier she was, the more hope there was in fixing things.

If her attitude had just been cold indifference, it’d truly be over.

Then Zhou Can would’ve given up apologizing and tried to make up for it in other ways.

Like talking to Mr. Li and arranging to advertise at her TV station, making sure she got the credit.

No matter how high and mighty TV stations acted, advertising was still their biggest revenue source.

Small-time advertisers got ignored.

Major advertisers got VIP treatment, complete with top execs to entertain them.

“Mu Qing, I hear the Xiya Grand Hotel has amazing food—eighteen thousand a table. Plus, that wine at seven or eighty thousand a bottle. Dr. Zhou’s apology is sincere. How about we reluctantly accept and let him treat us once? Otherwise, he’ll blame you tonight for not giving him the chance.”

Old Qin said that with a totally straight face.

Mu Qing glanced at Old Qin, who shot her a wink.

“Dr. Zhou, what do you say? If you’re apologizing, let’s see some real sincerity.” Old Qin was clearly trying to scare Zhou Can off.

Even chief physicians at Tuyu Hospital, for all their high salaries, couldn’t afford a dinner that pricey.

No one has money to burn over something so trivial.

A ten-thousand-yuan dinner over an apology? Who could accept that?

But Zhou Can didn’t even blink. “It’s settled, then! I’ll help carry your bags—let’s go eat now.”

Old Qin thought he was bluffing just to scare Zhou Can off.

He never expected Zhou Can—so ordinary at first glance—to accept without hesitation. Old Qin was now at a loss.

He studied Zhou Can’s face and realized he wasn’t acting.

A chill ran down Old Qin’s spine. Who was this guy, really? Who could shell out ten grand for one meal and not bat an eye?

“Hey, give me my bag back!”

Mu Qing chased after him.

Her laptop was her livelihood, with articles and reports stored inside.

But Zhou Can was already several steps ahead.

She had to jog to keep up.

“Damn, he’s actually going!” Old Qin quickly packed up his camera and other gear and hurried after them.

When Old Qin caught up outside, he found Mu Qing had stopped Zhou Can.

“Give me back my bag!”

“Let’s eat first—you promise to forgive me, and I’ll return it.”

Zhou Can slung her bag over his shoulder, refusing to hand it back.

Her bag wasn’t heavy.

Besides the laptop, it probably just held the usual reporter gear—like a microphone.