“Put your hand here. Let me take your pulse.”
Hearing Qin Jiang say that, Zhong Chenglong immediately placed his hand on the table.
Seeing Qin Jiang rest his fingers on the wrist and then stay silent for a while, Zhong Xiguo couldn’t help but ask from the side, “Doctor Qin, my son… he’s probably fine, right?”
Qin Jiang glanced at him.
“Physically, there’s nothing much wrong with him. In fact, you could say he’s quite healthy.”
“You probably exercise regularly, don’t you? And you don’t smoke or drink?”
Zhong Chenglong nodded.
“I run five kilometers every morning without fail. I’m not interested in smoking or drinking at all.”
As soon as Zhong Chenglong said that, the viewers in the live stream started expressing their admiration.
“After seeing so many patients, this is the first one who doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, and doesn’t have kidney issues.”
“So if he’s this healthy, why does he still feel like he’s sick?”
“I’m starting to think his dad’s suspicion might actually be reasonable. Could it really be that he’s just faking it?”
Qin Jiang continued, “Do you stay up late often?”
“No. Lights go out at eleven in our dorm. As soon as they do, I go to sleep, and I wake up at six the next morning.”
Qin Jiang nodded.
Plenty of sleep, too.
So where exactly was the problem?
Qin Jiang stood up and made a gesture to Zhong Chenglong.
“Come on. I’ll do an MRI on you to see if something’s going on with your brain.”
Zhong Xiguo spoke up from the side, “Doctor Qin, this MRI you mentioned… isn’t it going to be really expensive?”
Seeing Qin Jiang look at him, Zhong Xiguo said with some hesitation, “My son’s brain is actually pretty sharp. He’s the first college student in our whole village. Even his teachers praise him for being smart.”
“There’s definitely nothing wrong with his head. Maybe we could skip the MRI?”
Qin Jiang frowned and asked, “When you went for checkups before, did you ever get an MRI done?”
Zhong Xiguo shook his head.
“I just took my son for a few basic tests. All his numbers came back healthy.”
Qin Jiang explained patiently, “Mr. Zhong, I understand you want to save money. But medical treatment is no joke.”
“Your son is already showing symptoms like inability to concentrate and skipping lines while writing. That indicates that some kind of change has definitely occurred inside his brain.”
“In order to identify what that change is, an MRI is absolutely necessary.”
Zhong Xiguo was still reluctant to spend the money.
He thought Zhong Chenglong was just faking it. Bringing him to see the doctor was originally just going through the motions. He hadn’t expected Qin Jiang to order such an expensive procedure.
“Alright, fine. Let’s do it.”
Zhong Xiguo gritted his teeth and finally decided to go all in with the tests—just to make Zhong Chenglong give up for good!
Qin Jiang took Zhong Chenglong into the examination room for the scan. Before long, the images were ready.
Qin Jiang looked at the scans, and the longer he looked, the more serious his expression became.
Zhong Xiguo asked from the side, “So, Doctor Qin, is there something wrong with my son?”
Qin Jiang handed the images to Zhong Xiguo and explained, “According to the MRI results, your son has a serious case of white matter disease.”
“Huh?”
Zhong Xiguo was completely baffled.
“What is white matter disease?”
Qin Jiang explained, “White matter is a crucial part of the central nervous system. It’s where the nerve fibers are concentrated.”
“If a lesion occurs in this area, it will cause certain damage to brain function.”
“This includes, but is not limited to, issues with vision, movement, sensation, the cerebellum, autonomic nerves, and cognitive function.”
“This is exactly why your son has trouble concentrating when taking notes, and why he keeps skipping lines when reading and writing. That’s the reason behind it.”
After hearing Qin Jiang’s explanation, Zhong Xiguo fell silent.
He had originally thought that his son was hanging out with the wrong crowd and pretending to be sick to skip school.
He never expected that his son was actually sick.
“How could this happen? Their school even organized physical exams.”
Qin Jiang said calmly, “School physicals don’t include MRIs. Those basic checkups can only screen for some common illnesses. They don’t guarantee that you’re healthy.”
Zhong Chenglong, after all, was a top student, and he immediately zeroed in on the core issue.
“Doctor Qin, then what exactly is the cause of my white matter disease?”
That was what Zhong Chenglong couldn’t figure out.
He lived a very regular life—no smoking, no drinking, no staying up late. So why would he suddenly develop white matter disease?
Qin Jiang looked at Zhong Chenglong.
“There are many factors that can cause white matter disease, including environmental influences, viral infections, immune system deficiencies, and so on. Drug use can also cause it.”
Drug use!
Zhong Xiguo and his wife looked at Zhong Chenglong in shock.
“You brat! You’re using drugs?!”
Zhong Chenglong said with great exasperation, “Dad, can you please listen to the whole sentence?”
“Doctor Qin said drug use can cause it too—that it’s one of the possible causes. How did that turn into me using drugs?”
“Even if I wanted to, do I even have access to that kind of stuff?”
“All you ever do is suspect me. What did I do wrong to make you distrust me so much?”
Zhong Chenglong’s words didn’t embarrass Zhong Xiguo in the slightest. Instead, he said to his son angrily, “You’d better not be doing anything like that. If I ever find out you’ve been up to no good, just you wait!”
Hearing Zhong Xiguo say that, the netizens in the live stream found it completely unreasonable.
“Is this guy sick or what? His kid hasn’t done anything wrong, so why is he already throwing out threats?”
“My dad is exactly like that. Whenever something bad comes up, he immediately thinks of me. Back when someone stole the class funds in our school, the first thing my dad asked was whether I took it.”
“I really don’t understand why some parents think that way. As if their own child is the worst one out there.”
By this point, Zhong Chenglong had no energy left to argue with his father.
After so many years, he was used to it.
The reason he worked so hard to get into college was actually to get away from Zhong Xiguo.
If he had to live with his father every single day, Zhong Chenglong felt like he’d end up depressed.
Qin Jiang couldn’t meddle in other people’s family affairs. Once the two of them had argued enough, he spoke up, “To figure out exactly what’s causing the white matter disease, I need to run a full set of tests on your son.”
With that, Qin Jiang listed several tests on a piece of paper.
Zhong Xiguo took one look and felt dizzy just reading them.
Blood tests, tumor markers, six metabolic brain tests, white matter disease screening—those, he could still understand.
But what were all those things written after that, like the lumbar puncture and cerebrospinal fluid panel? He had never even heard of them.
Zhong Xiguo looked at the list of tests with an awkward expression.
“Doctor Qin… are all of these tests really necessary? The cost… it’s too expensive. We can’t afford it.”
“Maybe we should just not treat this after all.”
Qin Jiang frowned.
“Who starts treatment and stops halfway? If you’re sick, you need treatment. Otherwise, if you let this drag on, your son’s condition will only get worse.”
