Header Background Image
    Chapter Index
    Read Advanced Chapters on Patreon: patreon.com/fantasystories797

    Chapter 12: Throat Swelling? Can Divine Techniques Work?

    Intubation. Gretel had done it countless times in his past life, maybe eight thousand at least. When it came to this procedure, there were three departments in the hospital that did it the most: Anesthesia, ENT, and Emergency, which had to know everything and could handle anything.

    For scheduled surgeries requiring intubation, they could call in an anesthesiologist or ask for help from the ENT department. After all, the ENT department had “throat” in its name. They were familiar with the anatomy of the pharynx and were all masters at intubation. They would just schedule the surgery, do the assessments beforehand, and arrive on time.

    But in emergencies, there was no way. The patient was already suffocating. The tube had to be inserted. Could they call for a consultation, wait for the anesthesiologist or the ENT department to rush down? Whether they took the elevator or the stairs, it would take a few minutes, and the patient could die in that time!

    So, the poor emergency doctors, when faced with such a situation, rolled up their sleeves and did it themselves…

    The problem was that Gretel had inserted all kinds of tubes in his past life: oral, nasal, tracheotomy, non-tracheotomy, simple, with stainless steel reinforcement wires, with an extra suction tube…

    But he had never inserted this.

    A·chicken·bone.

    Cut at both ends, slightly ground smooth, with some spongy bone in the middle, the sanitation status is questionable…

    Gretel said that if he could, he really didn’t want to use this thing to replace the tracheal tube. But there was nothing else at hand… As a substitute, a chicken bone was, at least, better than nothing.

    While operating, he had to explain to the priest:

    “After the cricothyroidotomy is done… What is the cricothyroid membrane? It’s this place where I cut, not just any place on the neck. It’s the safest to cut here…

    After cutting, you have to quickly find a tube to insert into the trachea to prevent the cricoid cartilage from being compressed and damaged, leading to laryngeal stenosis. What’s cricoid cartilage? Why is it damaged? Why laryngeal stenosis? I don’t have time to explain now…

    The child’s larynx is very narrow, so the tube cannot be inserted too deep, if you poke it through and insert it into the esophagus, it will be a big problem…”

    He kept chattering.

    If this were one of his students, daring to ask these basic questions, he would definitely kick them out and beat them up—what did they learn in class, they don’t even understand this?

    However, the priests in this world couldn’t possibly understand these things, and the situation was urgent, Gretel had to split his attention, trying to explain to the other party.

    He explained with his mouth, operated with his hands. There was no shadowless lamp, no incandescent light, only dim candlelight and torches—and no one to help with a mirror to reflect light. Even Edison knew to use a mirror to save his mother!

    Well, though it was said that it was made up later…

    “Oh, so…”

    “Don’t speak! It’s starting!”

    The priest was startled by his shout and tightly pressed his lips together. Gretel lowered his head, aiming the chicken bone at the cricothyroidotomy incision under the flickering light, holding it steady in his hand, and pushed it inwards.

    After a slight resistance, the familiar feeling of emptiness reached his fingertips, indicating that the tube in his hand—the chicken bone—had passed through the incision and entered the larynx.

    A subtle, whistling sound of air immediately flowed through the chicken bone in the larynx and reached Gretel’s ears.

    The operation was completed!

    Next was…uh, fixation…

    Damn, it’s bad!

    No tape!

    There were no tools to stick to the chicken bone, fix it to the patient’s neck, and prevent it from moving!

    What could he grab to make do…

    On his first day in a different world, his second emergency surgery, Gretel was in tears again.

    It turned out that in terms of treating and saving people, the imagination and creativity of doctors were boundless. Gretel looked at the throat with a chicken bone stuck in it, hesitated for less than a second, immediately made up his mind, grabbed the child’s hand and stuffed it into the farmer’s hand:

    “Uncle Edmond, hold him tight!”

    He urged. As he spoke, he grabbed the farmer’s other hand and pressed it on the child’s shoulder:

    “Don’t let him move! Not even a little bit! Especially his neck, the tube stuck there, absolutely cannot move!”

    The farmer with a full beard nodded vigorously and called on a few other men to come forward and hold the boy down with seven hands and eight legs. The priest of the Spring Water Goddess had been holding his breath and watching, and only now dared to breathe, and hurriedly asked:

    “So that’s all?”

    “Not yet!”

    Gretel chuckled wryly. He pointed to the child’s throat and gestured to the priest to look:

    “Look, his throat is still swollen. The child can’t breathe normally—when the swelling goes down, that’s when he’s out of danger.”

    “Is that so?”

    The priest leaned down, trying to see, even coaxing the child to open his mouth. Unfortunately, the light in the hall was really dim, he looked for a long time but couldn’t see clearly, struggled for a long time, and snapped his fingers:

    “Pop” a white light flickered, floated up, and drifted towards the child’s mouth.

    “Hey!”

    Gretel glanced over, immediately panicked:

    “Don’t treat him yet! He’s not in a state to be treated casually!”

    “But this is just a light spell…”

    The priest flinched at his shout, feeling a little wronged. Roman the knight stood by with his sword, glaring at Gretel. Gretel didn’t notice the knight’s gaze, he stood beside the priest, pointing constantly:

    “Look at his throat… the innermost part, it’s all swollen, isn’t it? There should be a black hole in the middle, but now you can’t see anything. Actually, it’s swollen further down, he can’t breathe in, he almost suffocated just now. Hey, you’re a priest of the Spring Water Goddess, you can control the flow of water, can you reduce the swelling?”

    “What’s swelling?”

    “Make those swollen places release water, don’t let them block the throat.”

    “This…”

    The priest was stumped. He frowned, thought for a long time, and shook his head:

    “There’s a similar offensive divine technique, it’s high-level, it drains all the water from the body in one go, I’m still far from that level. To drain the water from such a small area… I don’t know, I’ll pray and see if I can get divine grace…

    As soon as he said that, he did. The young priest adjusted his posture, not caring if his silk robe would get dusty on the earthen platform, he knelt down, clasped his hands in front of his chest, and muttered a long passage, then another long passage, finally raised his head and sighed in defeat:

    “No. The Goddess didn’t answer me. …What about you? Do you have a way?”

    His eyes were full of anticipation, focused on Gretel once again.

    Gretel was silent.

    I wanted to skip the middle steps and go straight to the answer using divine techniques, but it didn’t work, did it?

    The limitations of divine techniques were really too strong. If there was a ready-made answer, you could directly copy it, but if there was no ready-made answer, you didn’t even have a solution…

    Okay, then I’ll take over and let modern medicine handle it!

    (End of Chapter)

    Previous Chapter | TOC | Next Chapter

    You can support the author on

    0 Comments

    Heads up! Your comment will be invisible to other guests and subscribers (except for replies), including you after a grace period. But if you submit an email address and toggle the bell icon, you will be sent replies until you cancel.
    Note