A number of isolation wards were connected from both sides to the office area in the middle. At this time, there were only three people in the large office: Wang Ruoxiang, Lin Shizhe, and Chen Xiang.
They sat in front of a row of monitoring screens and watched the situation in one of the wards. The patient, Zhou Kewen, was crazily eating the 50 grams of abnormal soil.
"Hmm, hmm …" A strange swallowing sound came from the computer speakers. The patient was still wolfing down the food, but it was eating faster than before. It was like a zombie gulping down rotten food, and it would definitely cause damage to the already injured upper digestive tract.
After eating all the soil, Zhou Kewen shouted anxiously, "I want more, I want more, this is not enough. Is there more? I want more!"
"Student Zhou, calm down." Wang Ruoxiang was just comforting him and did not respond to the patient's request.
After the experimental patient ate ordinary soil, he had food poisoning reaction in less than a minute, so it would soon be known whether there was a difference in the abnormal soil or not.
Tick tock, tick tock, the second hand of the clock on the wall was moving. One minute passed in the blink of an eye, then two minutes, three minutes.
After a full five minutes, Zhou Kewen did not have any food poisoning reaction, his vital signs were stable, and his mind was clear, but he kept asking for more soil.
"There is a difference, the abnormal soil was accepted by the patient." Lin Shizhe said, this was the situation in front of them.
"The patient's blood pressure is more stable." Chen Xiang said another situation. From the various indicators, the patient seemed to have taken some kind of elixir.
Wang Ruoxiang thought about what this meant, but the soil that the sickly body was calling out to was just ordinary soil in terms of composition …
"Student Zhou, now we will send you some bread, bananas, and water. If you eat it, we will give you another 10 grams of soil."
She continued the next step of the experiment. Since the patient was not cooperative, this was the only way.
Soon, another remote control drone drove into the ward, bringing 100 grams of bread, 50 grams of bananas, and 200 milliliters of water.
Because of the temptation of the soil reward, Zhou Kewen also ate all the food. After another five minutes, he did not have any adverse reactions. Wang Ruoxiang gave the patient another 10 grams of abnormal soil as planned. After the patient ate it, everything seemed to be normal.
If the patient only liked to eat this kind of soil, then it was in line with the diagnosis of pica, but … was there any locust in the patient's body?
This might take some time to confirm. From Arbor Day to Headmaster Chui's self-explosion, it had been 4 days.
Due to the urgency of the situation, the medical team planned to perform the first gastroscopy five hours after the patient consumed the soil. After that, the gastroscopy would be repeated every five hours. Before that, the three of them followed the original plan and continued the experiment on the next patient. This patient was Sun Cuiting, a 37-year-old female teacher who had never eaten ordinary soil before.
Soon, the six patients who participated in the experiment finished eating, and there were no adverse effects.
Wang Ruoxiang reported the results of the experiment to the command center, and she learned that the patients who did not get to eat the foreign soil were becoming more and more agitated.
If there were no worms in the patient's body, and if he could maintain this good condition, then there would be a temporary treatment …
At 2: 34 am, less than four hours after ingesting the soil, the first subject suddenly developed abdominal pain.
Zhou Kewen's face was pale from the pain. His forehead was covered in cold sweat. He described it to the medical team as' cramping pain, like something was crawling inside '.
Wang Ruoxiang and the rest immediately moved into action. Things appeared to be heading towards the worst direction.
They did not know the theory behind it, but that was not something they should be worrying about. Should they perform gastroscopy first?
Normally, gastroscopy should be performed on an empty stomach because food and digestive waste would affect the vision. It would make it difficult for the doctor to see the condition of the mucous membrane and it could easily cause nausea and vomiting. But now, they were not here to examine the lesions but to see if there were any parasites inside the stomach.
After entering the sickroom, Wang Ruoxiang went forward to inject a larger dose of tranquilizer into Zhou Kewen and then sprayed anaesthetic into his throat.
"Doctor, I do not want to die …" Zhou Kewen pleaded. The young face was scrunched up from fear and pain. Tears fell from his eyes.
Lin Shizhe and Chen Xiang were both middle-aged men, they had the strength to hold the patient down but Zhou Kewen was still rational. He cooperated and bent his knees to lie on the left side.
"I know, we will try our best. Let's do an gastroscopy first." Wang Ruoxiang comforted the patient and told him some matters during the examination process. Then she gathered her tired spirit and prepared to start. She had learned and tried how to do gastroscopy before.
The painless gastroscopy instrument was set up on the side of the bed. She held the front end of the scope in her right hand and slowly put it into the patient's mouth to the base of the tongue.
At this time, the patient would feel nauseous. Zhou Kewen was like this. Therefore, he swallowed and the upper esophagus suddenly appeared to be open.
At this moment, Wang Ruoxiang inserted the gastroscopy along the opening of the esophagus.
"Oh …" Zhou Kewen whimpered in pain.
The slender and soft gastric tube was inserted into the patient's stomach bit by bit. The image captured by the camera was displayed on the screen of the gastroscopy instrument in real time.
Wang Ruoxiang looked at the screen while probing. Her handsome eyebrows gradually knitted together.
On the screen, there was some fresh red meat wriggling. It was the esophagus. After the gastroscopy entered the stomach, the food that had not been completely digested was exposed. Some of it adhered to the gastric mucosa, some tumbled as the patient swallowed. The brown-black soil was mixed with red blood and the digested mushy liquid. It looked a mess.
On the gastric mucosa, in the mushy liquid, there was a trace of translucent white silk. It completely ignored the gastric acid and wriggled repeatedly.
It looked like "Anisakis", a parasite that could parasitize marine fish and human bodies. First, fish were infected, then humans were infected by eating seafood.
Gastric acid could not kill them, but they had a strong penetrating ability. They could drill through the stomach wall, causing the patient's stomach to perforate and even enter the muscle. At present, there was no specific medicine to treat this kind of evil worm. The worm could only be removed with a fiber gastroscopy or a laparotomy to remove the worm.
People who were infected with Anisakis would show symptoms after 1 to 5 days. During the acute stage, symptoms included nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and so on …
If Zhou Kewen went to a normal hospital and was examined by a group of doctors who did not know what was going on, they would most likely diagnose him as infected with Anisakis.
But Lin Shizhe had participated in the autopsy on Headmaster Chui, so naturally he could tell that it was not Anisakis but a locust.
Wang Ruoxiang was more familiar with this. Every organ and structure in Headmaster Chui's body had traces of these parasites. They were not mature yet, they were the larvae that could be seen.
There were worms, there were worms inside the patient's body.
When Headmaster Chui self-destructed, Zhou Kewen was standing at the back of the field. From this distance, it was impossible for him to have inhaled the worms.
"What is that …" Wang Ruoxiang's frown deepened. She saw a piece of gastric mucosa turn translucent and rapidly decompose into a pile of worm silk. The original gastric mucosa turned brown like it was scalded by a knife. There was no blood seeping out.
The newly decomposed worm silk wiggled and wriggled. They were submerged in the mushy liquid. They would enter the intestines and turn the intestines into a sea of parasites.
"How is this possible?" Lin Shizhe was confused. He too saw this strange phenomenon. Human tissues were converted into parasites just like that.
Even as a member of the Action Department, he knew how bad the situation was. If the gastric mucosa could be converted, what about the muscles? What about the skin?
Seeing the change in their expressions, Zhou Kewen felt even more uncomfortable. He whimpered nervously, obviously asking about his own condition.
Wang Ruoxiang was speechless. She could not utter words of comfort like 'you're fine, you're fine' against her will.
Thinking about how Headmaster Chui's body was infested with parasites, even inside his bones, her heart chilled and her ears buzzed …
There was no need for worm eggs, these infected patients did not need worm eggs.
It was as if … as if any part of the patients' body could be converted into these worms. Eventually, the whole person would turn into a pile of worms.
The pathogen was on a higher level.
The patients did not need to consume worm eggs because they were already worm eggs. Eating the soil was to obtain nutrients for them to grow …
Locust Sickness, this was indeed Locust Sickness.
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