Upon hearing this, Hu Hao’s breath became unsteady. The doctor’s words seemed to announce that the child could die at any moment, and the parents’ psyche was basically on the brink of collapse.

Cao Zhao looked at the parents’ expressions, quietly waiting, as he reached into the pocket of his white coat and pulled out a handkerchief to hand to the parents.

This celestial-like figure gave him a handkerchief, as if handing him a piece of celestial treasure. Hu Hao felt this in his heart, his hands instinctively reaching out to take the handkerchief from the other party.

"Wipe off your sweat," Cao Zhao said to him.

Hu Hao placed the handkerchief on his forehead and wiped it.

Xie Wanying recalled the handkerchief that Senior Cao often kept in his pocket, wondering if the way Senior Cao handed her a handkerchief was similar to how Second Brother Cao was now handing one to Hu Hao. (Cao Yong: Little junior, you’re overthinking it...)

"We’ll talk about the gastrointestinal examination later. At present, the child’s condition hasn’t reached the most severe stage I mentioned," Cao Zhao tapped on the key points Student Xie had drawn. Even without contrast, an amazing medical student could already roughly deduce where the issue was based on rather crude imaging results.

Gastrointestinal X-ray examinations without saying cannot produce images without contrast. It’s just that the organ tissue and density in the abdomen are very similar; the resulting images can easily confuse and merge various organs, making them difficult to identify. Therefore, the purpose of injecting contrast agent is to enhance contrast so doctors can easily distinguish each tissue and organ and ultimately find the lesion.

According to the above principle, Student Xie’s prowess is not just simple excellence. Cao Zhao glanced at Student Xie again.

Xie Wanying maintained her constant cautious attitude, ready at any moment to answer the teacher’s questions.

Continuing to lecture the parents, Cao Zhao said, "Roughly, it is estimated that the location of the fistula is at the T2 level segment. If it is confirmed, a possible endoscopic surgery could solve the problem. One can say, this child is very lucky."

"Is my son lucky?" After being disheartened, Hu Hao heard the doctor’s words again, and a sense of hope rekindled in his heart.

Parents who don’t study medicine don’t know; this disease, esophageal atresia in children, often requires staged surgeries. Staged surgeries mean that a single surgery cannot solve the problem and cure the disease for the children. Staged surgery is very common in pediatric surgery; the reasoning has been explained earlier.

Hence, esophageal atresia is classified into five types for this purpose, guiding the doctor’s subsequent treatment plans.

Take Type I, the first type of esophageal atresia, which has no fistula and does not communicate with the trachea. At first glance, this situation might seem the best, as having no fistula means there’s nothing internally causing chaos, leading to pulmonary infections, etc., complications. At least parents like Hu Hao, upon hearing their child’s condition, would think so, possibly feeling their son would be better off with Type I disease.

The medical perspective is not like this. If you have a fistula, you can suture it and get rid of it directly. In contrast, for something like Type I, a large central section of the esophagus is missing.

Doctors fear most, a skilled woman cannot cook without rice.

Just like cancer patients, doctors can keep cutting for patients; cutting is easy. But a patient’s survival depends on their organs functioning normally. The organ that needs to be removed must be replaced; once the doctor removes it, what will replace it? Without a substitute, the human body is like a machine missing parts and losing function; the body cannot function and survive. So, what’s fatal for cancer patients isn’t the organs being invaded but the inability to replace the removed organs.