Chinese Medicine: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 529: Chapter 529: A Grave Situation

The patient was very sensitive to the cold.

He was bundled up in thick clothes, even in the hospital room.

But that wasn’t the crucial part. The crucial part was...

When Li Xu drew closer and got a good look, his heart leaped into his throat.

The child’s face... it was as shriveled as a skull.

His eye sockets were sunken, his cheekbones jutted out, and his breathing was rapid and shallow.

It seemed there wasn’t an ounce of flesh on his face. The skin was stretched taut over his bones, a terrifying living skeleton.

His entire face was devoid of color, as pale as a sheet of paper.

The phrase "skin and bones" wasn’t even close to describing the little boy’s condition.

It was a sense of life itself withering away.

Even more bizarrely, his skin, which should have been fair and soft, now had a dark, sallow-brown hue, like a withered leaf scorched by an autumn frost.

Mixed in with the dark color were patches of desiccated yellow, exuding a heavy aura of death.

’Is... is this... a living person?’

It was the only thought that surfaced in Li Xu’s mind.

If not for the rapid breaths from his nose, which sounded like the desperate gasps of the dying, Li Xu would never have been able to connect this withered, stick-like boy with a living being.

Anyone who was a parent wouldn’t even dare to look at this scene.

The sunken eye sockets, the taut, dark-yellow skin like that of a dried corpse, the disproportionately large head...

A second glance was enough to make one’s heart ache to the point of tears.

Li Xu took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing his shock.

He leaned closer to the boy, wanting to observe him more carefully.

Suddenly, a foul odor assaulted his senses.

It wasn’t the normal smell of sweat or excrement, but a unique, nauseating stench of decay, mingled with the thick scent of blood.

It was like... the smell of flesh rotting from the inside out.

Li Xu couldn’t help but frown, subconsciously holding his breath.

’What... what in the world is going on here?’

Just then, the little boy on the bed suddenly began to wail.

His cries were hoarse and sharp, like the piercing screams of a dying kitten.

"WAAH—WAAH—"

Seeing this, the woman, like a startled bird, scrambled over and held her child tightly.

She paid no mind to the doctors and nurses watching, not even to the young male doctor, Li Xu, standing right beside her. She simply lifted her shirt and began to breastfeed the child.

The woman’s eyes were brimming with tears, but she stubbornly refused to let them fall.

She gently patted the child’s back, murmuring over and over, "There, there, my sweet boy. Don’t cry, don’t cry."

"Mommy’s here."

"Don’t cry, don’t cry... Mommy’s here."

Her voice was so gentle it was heartbreaking.

But just then, Li Xu’s pupils contracted sharply.

He saw a trickle of bright red blood stream down from the corner of the suckling boy’s mouth!

DRIP, DRIP. It landed on the clean white sheets, a shocking sight.

He couldn’t tell if the boy’s gums were bleeding or if the child had bitten his mother.

Seeing this, a nurse nearby quickly grabbed some tissues and hurried over, carefully wiping the blood from the mother and child.

「A moment later...」

The little boy finally calmed down amidst the bloody comfort and fell into a deep sleep.

When the woman let go of her son, everyone saw the clear bite mark on her chest, a wound that was still bleeding. Just looking at it was enough to make one feel an agonizing pain.

Yet, from beginning to end, the woman never once said it hurt. She didn’t even frown.

Witnessing this, every doctor present was stunned by this mother.

Li Xu’s mouth hung open, unable to form a single word for a long time.

His throat felt heavy, as if it were stuffed with cotton.

The woman wiped her tears, took the tissue offered by the nurse, gave her wound a quick dab, and pulled her shirt down. She looked at Li Xu and the others, embarrassed.

"I’m sorry... you had to see that..."

Li Xu, still dazed, couldn’t help but ask, "Does it hurt?"

Those three simple words, however, seemed to flip some kind of switch.

Hearing his question, the woman’s body trembled. Her tears streamed down like rain, no longer held back.

"It hurts!"

She clutched her chest and cried, "Of course it hurts... But... no matter how much it hurts me, it can’t compare to the pain my child is in!"

"He cries every day. He cries the moment he falls asleep. He’s up all night, every night, writhing in pain. When I see him like that, I hurt too! My heart is bleeding!"

"Only during the day does he feel a little better and get some sleep. I don’t have any other way to soothe him. This is the only way."

"My milk dried up a long time ago... but... it’s a habit for him now. It’s the only thing that calms him down."

Li Xu took a deep breath. As he looked at the mother before him, a newfound respect filled his eyes.

The greatness of a mother’s love involves sacrifices no child could ever imagine.

She was using her own flesh and blood to assuage her child’s endless suffering.

’But... what on earth was wrong with this child?’

For a moment, the room fell silent again, leaving only the sound of the woman’s suppressed sobs.

"Doctor Li... I’m begging you, please save my boy."

"He’s only five years old... He hasn’t even had a chance to see the world..."

"If I could trade my life for his, I’d do it in a heartbeat... Even if you had to slice me to pieces..."

Li Xu held up a hand, signaling for the mother to calm down. "Don’t worry, ma’am."

"Let me take a look at the situation first. As long as there’s a sliver of hope, I won’t give up."

As he spoke, Li Xu picked up the medical chart and began to review it carefully once more.

He had seen diseases that caused such severe emaciation before.

It could be cachexia from late-stage cancer, a severe wasting disease like tuberculosis, or some rare genetic metabolic disorder!

However, the little boy had undergone every possible test. A thick stack of lab reports showed that none of those were the issue.

Tumor markers were negative, the tuberculin test was negative, and they had even done whole exome sequencing without finding any pathogenic mutations.

This was very strange.

"Does he eat normally?" Li Xu asked.

"He eats normally. Sometimes he even has a big appetite," the woman said, wiping her tears. "It’s just... he throws up right after he eats. He’ll eat again, and he’ll throw it up again."

"And he has diarrhea. He has it several times a day, and it smells absolutely awful. It’s all undigested food."

"We can’t control it at all. Sometimes he’ll be fine, and then the diarrhea will just start. The boy is like a funnel; whatever goes in comes right back out."

Li Xu frowned. ’So it’s not anorexia?’

If it were anorexia, he wouldn’t eat at all.

The boy’s willingness to eat meant his appetite was still intact. But the fact that he couldn’t hold anything down pointed to a severe yang deficiency in the spleen and kidneys, meaning the core of his digestive system was critically cold and weak.

He walked back over to the little boy’s side and gently lifted the blanket. Only then did he notice how poorly developed the boy’s body was.

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