After leaving O’Neal’s room and finishing the rest of his rounds, Chen Yu headed straight for the operating room to prepare for surgery.
He was busy with many things and had a lot of players to worry about, but Chen Yu still tried his best to make time for surgery.
After all, many patients came to the clinic specifically for him.
He also needed to improve his treatment efficacy and level up his skills.
As he was changing into his scrubs in the locker room, Lexi burst in.
"What’s wrong?" Chen Yu casually put his arm around Lexi.
Lexi gently pushed him away and said, "There’s a patient without an appointment. Calva sent him over. He’s a bit strange, and I think you need to see him."
Chen Yu was slightly stunned. ’Calva is Hill’s father and a major shareholder in the clinic. A patient he sent over must be an MLB player.’
Over the past two years, he had sent quite a few patients to the clinic.
Some media outlets had even jokingly dubbed Chen Yu’s clinic Major League Baseball’s official partner medical institution.
"What do you mean, ’strange’?" Chen Yu asked in return.
Lexi said with a puzzled expression, "My preliminary diagnosis is a muscle tone deficiency caused by a neurological disorder, but the main symptoms don’t quite fit. He’s a pitcher, but suddenly, he can’t pitch anymore. He can’t throw accurately at all, which is why I find it so strange."
Chen Yu knew about muscle tone deficiencies, of course, but what did she mean he ’suddenly can’t pitch anymore’?
"Okay, have him wait a moment. I’ll go see him after I finish my surgery," Chen Yu said. The patient for his current operation was already on the table.
Lexi nodded, stood on her tiptoes, and adjusted Chen Yu’s surgical cap.
The two of them were very close, but Chen Yu’s mind was preoccupied, wondering what could cause someone to suddenly be unable to pitch.
Then, something suddenly occurred to him, and he exclaimed softly, "I just thought of a possibility. He doesn’t have the yips, does he?"
"The what?" Lexi was taken aback.
The more Chen Yu thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. Otherwise, such a strange symptom—suddenly being unable to pitch—wouldn’t just appear out of nowhere.
However, Chen Yu didn’t explain right away. "It’s a very troublesome condition. Look, I’ll do the surgery first and explain it to you later."
It was a partial hip replacement surgery.
Chen Yu was a master at this kind of "hammer and chisel" surgery, and he quickly completed the replacement of the femoral head.
Leaving the closing work to William, Chen Yu left the operating room, hurriedly threw on a white coat, and had a nurse call for Jamie. Together, they headed to the consultation area.
"The yips?" On the way, after listening to Chen Yu’s description, Jamie said with some surprise, "Chen, you’re so busy. How do you find the time to read papers and learn about such an obscure disease?"
Chen Yu rolled his eyes at him. "I have no choice. Learning leads to progress. Medical science is advancing so quickly; if I don’t study, I’m afraid I’ll be left behind. Did you know? The reading material next to my toilet isn’t gossip magazines, it’s *The Lancet* and *Cell*."
Jamie gave him a thumbs-up. Just as he was about to say more, Lexi came up to them and asked what exactly "the yips" was.
"Let him explain it to you," Chen Yu said, pointing at Jamie.
Jamie explained, "The condition has been around for a long time, but it was first noticed in the sixties and seventies. It has a high incidence among golfers. Some golfers would suddenly experience twitching, body stiffness, and other-symptoms during crucial matches, especially in the wrists and fingers, leading to inaccurate putting."
"At first, many people just thought it was a psychological issue, like excessive mental pressure from a critical game. But later, similar situations were found in baseball players, dart players, and tennis players. It wasn’t simple dystonia, and there were no obvious neurological lesions."
"It’s only in recent years that research teams have started tracking and studying it, naming it ’the yips’ after the golf term. Severe cases result in the situation you described: a top athlete who has trained for over a decade seems to suddenly lose their skills overnight."
Lexi frowned, taking this in, then asked the crucial question: how to treat it.
Jamie shrugged and shook his head. "There’s no cure for now. I read a research report from Harvard Medical School; they believe it can be treated by blocking nerve transmission, but that only treats the symptoms, not the root cause."
The subtext was that it was basically an incurable condition.
Chen Yu pushed the door open and walked in.
In the consultation room sat a young man. He was very young, only twenty-two, with a scruffy, unkempt goatee. Beside him stood a Black man in a suit and tie.
Seeing Chen Yu enter, the Black man immediately came forward and greeted him with a friendly hug.
"Chen, we meet again."
"Rick."
Chen Yu shook his hand, then said with some surprise, "Is he one of your players too?"
The Black man before him was Rick Smith, a well-known agent in Major League Baseball. His players were spread across the major and minor leagues. Two of his players had been treated by Chen Yu before, so they had met several times.
Rick sighed, nodded helplessly, and pleaded, "Chen, we’re truly out of options. You’re our last hope. Please, you have to find a way to cure Rick. He’s a genius."
Chen Yu had heard the phrase "he’s a genius" many times before.
But this time, Rick Ankiel was the real deal.
He was the best high school player in the United States and was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals. In ’99, he was the Minor League MVP. In 2000, he officially entered the Major Leagues. In his first rookie season, his strikeout rate was second in the league, surpassed only by the league’s best pitcher, Randy Johnson.
Without a doubt, he was a rapidly rising star.
But in the first round of the playoffs that season, after two outstanding innings, he got to the third and suddenly became like a swimmer in a pool who had forgotten how to swim. He could no longer pitch.
From that day forward, he had suddenly lost his ability to pitch and could never again step onto the pitcher’s mound.
The Cardinals didn’t give up on him. He traveled all over the United States, and even the world, searching for a cure, but after more than a year, he remained uncured.
Chen Yu smiled and looked at Rick, his Eye of All-Seeing meticulously scanning his body.
There were signs of old injuries.
This was normal, as he was a professional athlete.
But his hands, his shoulders—the parts that executed the pitching motion—had no issues whatsoever.
Chen Yu’s gaze pierced through flesh and blood, focusing on the nerves.
For the past year, Rick had been seeing neurologists, trying to treat his condition.
When all else failed, someone recommended he try Chen Yu, because the referring doctor felt it was a type of movement disorder, and Chen Yu was, without a doubt, an authority in sports medicine.
And so, they had come.
Chen Yu casually picked up the EEG to look at it, but his attention remained on Rick, specifically on his head—his cerebral cortex.
During the earlier surgery, Chen Yu had been trying hard to recall all the papers and research findings he had read about the yips.
There were a few groups studying this disease.
Then he remembered something from last year: a research team at the Mayo Clinic had a theory about the condition.
They theorized that the onset of the condition was related to plastic changes in the cerebral cortex.
The cerebral cortex controls the perception and movement of all parts of the body. The researchers believed that when a person overtrains a specific body part—like Rick, a pitcher who had spent his whole life training his wrists, fingers, and arm...
...the corresponding areas of the cerebral cortex would undergo plastic changes due to repeated stimulation. These areas would expand, affecting other regions and ultimately leading to disordered neural signals, causing symptoms like stiffness and twitching.
But Chen Yu felt this only explained the physiological changes. ’It’s like Parkinson’s, where a pathological change in the body causes twitching and stiffness when you try to perform certain actions.’
’But in Rick’s case, it’s not just that his pitches are inaccurate; his brain has also forgotten the pitching techniques, making him unable to throw at his previous level. This can’t be explained simply as a physiological problem.’
’Most importantly, even when I scan him with the Eye of All-Seeing, I can’t accurately determine if there are pathological changes in his cerebral cortex.’
"Rick," Chen Yu began after a moment of thought, "our preliminary diagnosis is that you have the yips. However, this is a very complicated condition, and we’ll need to carefully study how to treat it."
’This condition, while related to sports, is more of a neurological issue. It should really fall under the purview of neurology.’
’Therefore, Chen Yu couldn’t immediately think of a good treatment approach.’
A flicker of disappointment and melancholy crossed Rick’s eyes, as if he had faced this situation many times before.
He was even starting to feel hopeless.
After all, the man before him was hailed as the Miracle Doctor.
Chen Yu noticed the change in Rick’s expression and felt a pang of empathy.
A rising superstar, in the prime of his life, just when more than a decade of training was about to pay off—when he was about to start earning big money and begin a wonderful life—to be struck by such a condition... the blow was unimaginable.
"How about this," Chen Yu spoke up again. "Rick, I’ll arrange for you to go to my sports laboratory. I’ll have my team there test and record your physical condition. Then I’ll prescribe you some medication. You’ll take it for one cycle, and then we’ll re-test and compare the before-and-after results to see if the medication is having any effect."
’Since I can’t determine the cause of the disease, I should start by addressing the symptoms.’
’He can’t pitch anymore, so I’ll treat it as a neurological problem for now.’
’I’ll prescribe some neurotrophic drugs, like gangliosides, and have him try them first.’
’Ordinary drugs might not do much, but I have my system. If I boost the medication’s efficacy, it might just work.’
’After he finishes the course of medication, we’ll do the comparative tests to determine if his condition has improved and whether this treatment method is effective.’
"Of course, this is just the first step. I still need to do more research for the specific follow-up treatment."
Chen Yu was also planning to approach it from a psychological angle.
’Because in the beginning, the medical community considered this disease a type of anxiety disorder.’
’Many people become suddenly stiff and tense when facing immense pressure. A common treatment method recommended by many psychologists is to wear a rubber band on the wrist. When the symptoms appear, they snap it, using the pain to stimulate the body and alleviate the anxiety.’
’Perhaps I can come up with something along those lines.’

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