Chapter 364: Withdrawing a Transfer Application

"Respected Dean, forgive my presumption, but has the Lord prepared grace for His servant, even if it is but a sliver of hope?" The doctor's silence made Benny increasingly anxious, and he could not help but press further.

For a few seconds, Kraft stopped thinking.

The term "pituitary adenoma" rolled through his stalled brain like a Sisyphus boulder; any person with a shred of sanity should know that under current conditions, no matter which direction one strives, even if symptoms are temporarily alleviated, the final result will inevitably be futile.

In short, this belongs to the Heavenly Father's summons; the transfer procedure form has already been issued, and one might consider preparing Dominic's personal file in advance to burn it up together when the time comes.

As for the unfortunate boy caught in the crossfire, if the disease progresses similarly, Kraft could only consult Brother Lei Mengde to see if his standing as a dean is sufficient to issue an indulgence to secure the boy's ascent.

Rationally speaking, making further futile struggles holds no meaning.

But thinking back to how difficult it was to recruit personnel from the Church's grasp, and losing one before work had even formally begun, Field felt he could not explain this to him; how could he not also be unable to explain it to Green?

Not to mention that the next time such high-quality talent was replenished, heaven knew which monkey year or horse month it would wait until.

Kraft attempted one last effort, forcing himself to find a breakthrough outside the common sense system. After all, a treatment plan with an even lower survival rate could not be lower than zero.

Upon careful thought, one would discover that pituitary adenoma surgery must have emerged long before minimally invasive technology.

And the disease concept of pituitary adenoma appeared even earlier, originating from autopsies of patients exhibiting certain endocrine abnormalities and optic nerve compression symptoms.

The earliest surgeries were born at a time basically synchronous with the rise of X-ray imaging technology. Of course, X-rays lacked the ability to see intracranial soft tissue; diagnosis was made indirectly by observing structural changes in the sella turcica bone compressed by the pituitary adenoma.

At this point, disregarding misdiagnosis rates and surgical risks, one could actually proceed. Without technology to bypass dangerous areas, open surgery was the option.

If the entire skull were viewed as a sphere, divided in half by the skull base, with the northern hemisphere being the brain and the southern hemisphere the mandibular-facial region and cerebellum-brainstem, the eyeballs on the equator, then the pituitary gland would roughly lie behind the eyeballs, at the boundary between the mantle and core of the equatorial plane.

Directly opening the third eye from the forehead, incising the dura mater, and retracting the frontal lobe brain tissue upward—the front third of the northern hemisphere—would reveal the sella turcica in the center of the anterior skull base. If the hand trembled slightly, the optic chiasm lay right beside it, requiring great care.

As for the risks of manipulating the frontal lobe, another notorious surgery from the same era, the lobotomy, had already taken the stage; performing surgery on the pituitary seemed reasonable as well.

Here, the most difficult step had just begun. The surgeon needed to carefully scrape away the tumor tissue while avoiding damage to the normal pituitary; theoretically, the tissue colors of the two should differ, but in actual operation, it relied entirely on the surgeon's experience and tactile sense.

A slight misjudgment resulting in cutting a bit too much, or damaging a blood vessel, and the patient would soon see the gates of heaven or the oil pots of hell opening to them in their sleep.

The entire surgical process took about four to six hours; in neurosurgery, this was not considered too long, but performing it without life monitoring made it difficult for the patient to endure.

Even if the patient endured it, Kraft had never attempted to maintain spiritual senses for such a long duration. But if he left the spiritual senses, in a narrow, deep, and anatomically complex surgical field, what he cut would be beyond his control.

His tools possessed no generational gap compared to the divine figure who performed the first pituitary adenoma resection in history; the gap lay mainly in precision.

Perhaps the real-time precise positioning brought by spiritual senses could compensate for part of the gap in tools and experience, but the question turned back to how he could guarantee maintaining spiritual senses throughout the entire surgery.

The longest attempt in the past was less than one-tenth of six hours; ignoring post-event side effects and forcing himself could certainly extend it, but if he reached his limit prematurely during the surgery, there would absolutely be no second-in-command to step in here.

The only hope was to optimize time.

Pre-operative preparation up to the anesthesia induction stage would be handed to the assistant, allowing himself to conserve strength as much as possible; the structures of the scalp, skull, and dura mater were not complex and could be handled by the naked eye.

By the step of retracting the frontal lobe, external tricks would be mandatory. The cerebral cortex and white matter were too fragile, and this area concentrated the olfactory nerves and various small veins above the orbits; it was a small minefield before the big minefield, estimated to take at least forty minutes.

Identifying and scraping away the tumor tissue could not be rushed by a single second; allocating one hour was already optimistic.

Hemostasis and repositioning the bone flap, based on previous experience, would take about fifteen minutes at the fastest in total.

Final suturing, disinfection, and bandaging could be competently handled by Kupp; ugly stitches would not kill anyone.

A rough calculation showed that even in the smoothest scenario, maintaining at least two hours of high-intensity spiritual sense operation was required. Putting aside whether it was possible, this duration was no different from killing him.

Being hanged directly would be more pleasant. Losing consciousness from suffocation lasted only a short while, but the aftereffects of spiritual senses might not.

Time still had to be squeezed, ideally reduced to within one hour.

Top-tier personnel and equipment might complete a pituitary adenoma surgery within one hour, but it was unlikely for Kraft to complete a pituitary adenoma surgery within one hour.

Just this little bit of difference, and the Sisyphus boulder rolled down from the summit again.

Not even a little bit of difference would do.

Kraft's stubbornness rose. Failure with absolutely no hope was acceptable; failure due to falling short at the last moment was intolerable.

Pituitary surgery was a typical case of slow work yielding fine results; the hand skills had almost no room for optimization. No matter how clear the structure was, one still had to cut bit by bit; the hands could not be made fast.

Especially in the step of scraping away the tumor tissue, spiritual senses could help clarify the boundaries of the diseased tissue, but human operational ability had an upper limit.

【Unless hands are not used】

There needed to be an extremely rapid method, preferably operating in sync with spiritual senses, appearing at specific locations to complete cutting without being restricted by operational space.

It did not need to be used throughout the entire process; just "one cut" would suffice. This "cut" had to be extremely precise, approaching the limit of human spatial imagination, and sharp enough to ensure no surrounding tissue was tugged at all.

As long as such a thing existed, spiritual senses could guide it to the critical position at the critical moment, and the Sisyphus boulder would be forever fixed at the moment of reaching the summit.

Did he have such a thing?

"Yes, my friend, of course I do." Kraft placed his hand on the patient's forehead; that malformed tumor was only a few centimeters from his palm, yet it seemed thousands of li away, separated by Chongshanjunling.

Yet it was not out of reach.

"Please grant me a little time to make necessary preparations. The treatment will first be practiced and attempted on Brother Dominic, and then on this child."

He was going to withdraw a transfer application letter; even if it bore the Heavenly Father's signature and seal, he had to try.

(End of Chapter)