season 1 recaps

SEASON 1:

PILOT
Aired 11/16/04
A young woman named Rebecca is teaching her kindergarten class when she begins to have trouble speaking. Soon, she collapses on the floor and begins convulsing. At the hospital, Dr. James Wilson, describes the case to Dr. House. Female, 29, first seizure one month ago, progressive deterioration of mental status. The doctor asks House to take this case and put his team to work on it.

House’s team consists of three young genius doctors: Allison Cameron, Robert Chase and Eric Foreman, all bored stiff by House’s lack of cases. After much persuasion, House agrees to look over the patient. Later, the hospital administrator, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, scolds House about not doing his job. Even though he has tenure, she can still let him go if he avoids his duties of seeing patients.

Cameron and Foreman give Rebecca a CT scan, but she has another seizure inside the machine. The doctors perform an emergency tracheotomy to facilitate breathing. Later, House wonders if Rebecca has vasculitis, or inflamed blood vessels. Allison points out that you can’t diagnose vasculitis without a biopsy. House recommends they give her steroids to treat it and just see what happens.

House suggests to Foreman that he break into Rebecca’s apartment to inspect it. Foreman is reluctant, but does it anyway. Elsewhere, the steroids seem to be having a positive effect on Rebecca. Later that night, Wilson gives Rebecca some basic tests and she proclaims that she can’t see. More convulsions follow.

The next day, Foreman gives Rebecca a basic test which she fails, then passes. House suggests that they let her die, but pay attention post-mortem so that they can finally learn what disease she was suffering from. Foreman and Cameron inspect Rebecca’s apartment. They find nothing. Back at the hospital, Foreman reveals in passing that Rebecca had ham in her fridge. House has an epiphany -- Rebecca must have a tapeworm in her brain. Although this new revelation is diagnosed, Rebecca doesn’t want any more treatments. She just wants to die in peace. House calls her a coward. She wants proof it was a worm since he was wrong on vasculitis. Chase suggests a plain old x-ray to check for worms. House realizes he’s right. If there’s a worm in the brain, there is definitely one in her leg.

Chase shows Rebecca the x-ray. A worm larvae is in her thigh muscle. She will make a full recovery, and only require a small number of pills to get rid of the worm.

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Episode 2:

PATERNITY
Aired 11/23/04
A family arrives for an appointment with House even though it’s a walk-in clinic. They claim to have a letter from him about the appointment, which is odd because House doesn’t write letters. It seems that Dr. Cameron wrote the letter and signed House’s name to aid the family.

House agrees to see the patient. Dan is a 16-year old who has the sudden onset of double vision and night terrors. House says that post-traumatic stress and sexual abuse are two common symptoms. Dan, a high school lacrosse player, admits that he was recently struck in the head. House tells the kid to get some glasses to correct the double vision and ride out the concussion that’s causing the night terrors.

As the kid is leaving, House notices Dan’s foot twitch and he asks if he’s tired or about to fall asleep. He isn’t, and House knows the myoclonic jerk is common when a person is falling asleep. The body misinterprets a falling pulse as dying and jolts you awake. House instructs his staff to admit the patient.

House bets Dr. Foreman that the dad isn’t Dan’s biological father. They can’t rule out genetic causes just yet. During the first night, the patient has another night terror, which is recorded on a polysonagraph. But a series of scans and tests show no explanation for the symptoms. House re-examines the MRI and orders another test that shows there is significant blockage. A shunt is inserted to relieve the pressure. After surgery, it turns out what they thought was the issue was only a symptom of something larger. Is it Multiple Sclerosis?

That night, Dan goes missing from his bed. Cameron, Chase and Foreman set off on a search, eventually finding Dan on the roof. Dan thinks he’s on the lacrosse field walking around. The doctors tackle him moments before he wanders off the edge of the roof.

The next morning, House is confused by Foreman’s report from the roof. House is thrilled because this means Dan doesn’t have night terrors -- and thus, is not suffering from MS. Dan must have an infection in his brain, which House thinks is neurosyphillis.

As Cameron and Chase inject penicillin into Dan’s brain, he begins having another attack of voices in his head. The auditory hallucination disproves neurosyphillis. House orders more tests to read Dan’s brain. He notices that the parents have left their lunch behind in the hospital, so House takes a sample to run a DNA test. Cameron finds that neither of them are Dan’s biological parents. He’s adopted. Was his birth mother vaccinated? House thinks infant Dan caught a basic measles virus that mutated and reappeared 16 years later after settling into his brain. He suggests injecting a needle into the boy’s eye to do a biopsy on his retina.

That frightening test reveals the mutated virus which requires a dangerous brain surgery. However, the surgery if effective and Dan will be fine. Turns out Dan already knew he was adopted after doing his own research in the fifth grade.

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Episode 3:

OCCAM'S RAZOR
Aired 11/30/04
Brandon, a 22-year old male, passed out after having sex with his fiancée. He had been complaining about a cough and a rash beforehand. Now he is suffering severe abdominal pain, nausea, fever and low blood pressure.

A quick scan and exam reveal nothing, so House and team look for alternate answers. Dr. Cameron points out that no condition accounts for this many symptoms. House realizes they need to control the patient’s blood pressure first, and they run a core stem test and an EKG test among others.

The tests don’t reveal much, but Dr. Foreman sees a result that signifies that the antibiotic treatment is shutting down Brandon’s kidneys. Foreman theorizes that Brandon has a heart infection, not a stomach infection, which explains each symptom. Yet this is a 10 million to 1 shot. House, looking at a list of Brandon’s symptoms, offers that two possible conditions combined -- a sinus infection and hypothyroidism -- account for all of Brandon’s symptoms. And that’s only a million to 1 shot. Since there’s no time to wait for test results, he wants to start treating the sinus and thyroid immediately.

Foreman checks in on Brandon. The patient is feeling better but is still stuck with a cough. Foreman reports that Brandon tested negative for hypothyroidism. He insists that it can’t be two illnesses and House’s treatment regimen will only harm Brandon’s liver. It could even kill him. House offers Foreman a $50 bet. If Brandon’s white blood count goes up, Foreman is correct in presuming that he’s actually fighting off an infection.

Brandon’s white blood cell count drops. Both of their hypotheses were wrong. If Brandon gets so much as a cold, his body won’t be able to fight it off and he will die. House has a revelation. He asks Dr. Wilson which of Brandon’s symptoms came first. It was the coughing.

After a little research, House knows the answer. Brandon had visited a doctor for his cough and his prescription for cough medicine was accidentally filled with gout medicine. That medicine stops mytosis, the process in which cells divide and replace dead cells. This is not occurring, which explains each of the symptoms. But Dr. Cameron points out that Brandon did improve, but then worsen after checking into the hospital and stopping the gout medicine.

House meets with Brandon’s parents and demands to know who prescribed the cough medicine which led to their son’s deterioration. His mother gave it to him. She produces the pill bottle, which validates House’s thinking. Chase and Brandon’s mother visit the pharmacy. Brandon was indeed taking cough medicine and not gout medicine, disproving House’s theory. House is incredibly annoyed that his elegant, thoughtful hypothesis wasn’t proven right.

Dr. Wilson suggests exploratory surgery to find out what’s in Brandon’s blood. During the prep for surgery, Brandon’s heart stops beating and the doctors shock him back to life. Cameron tells House about the surgery emergency and also mentions that Brandon is experiencing pain in his fingers. House has another revelation. He barges into Brandon’s clean room and announces his diagnosis of colchicine poisoning. The order of Brandon’s symptoms fits perfectly, which means that Brandon is doing drugs. Brandon admits that he’s done ecstasy twice, which House notes is cut with colchicine. A quick fix and Brandon will be just fine.

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Episode 4:

MATERNITY
Aired 12/7/04
Still in the hospital, the newborn Hartig daughter spits up and the mother is concerned because the baby hasn’t eaten anything yet. The baby suffers a seizure. Later, a nurse who was in the room recounts the incident to another doctor in the lounge. She discusses the baby’s bowel obstruction. House overhears their chat and quickly leaves.

House presents Baby Hartig to his staff as Exhibit A. Exhibit B is Baby Hausen, another newborn who is also ill. House thinks an infection is spreading throughout the hospital, but Dr. Cuddy isn’t buying it. House tours his doctors in the maternity ward to check the twelve newborns in the hospital. Nothing. But they do find one more baby upstairs with a sudden fever and similar symptoms.

House and crew discuss three sick babies and the symptoms. With a spike in fever and low blood pressure, these children could be dead in one day. The group thinks it might be a bacterial infection. Since there’s no time to wait for test results, House orders the treatments to be started. Each baby gets an MRI. Nothing shows up on the scan, so the doctors continue administering two antibacterials. One of them starts causing the kidneys to shut down in two of the three babies. But which one? House says there’s no point in guessing, so take Baby Hartig off the Astrianam medication and Baby Chin-Lopino off the Vincomiacin.

Dr. Cuddy and a hospital administration refuse to allow House to change the treatments without informing the parents. He pleads that this experiment will save at least six more babies, so Cuddy gives him the green light. Later, the Chin-Lopino baby’s health begins to worsen with a falling heartrate and blood pressure. The doctors rush in and try to shock the baby back to life. The baby dies. The Astrianam doesn’t work. House instructs his staff to cover the rest of the babies with Vincomiacin.

Chase informs the team that the Vincomiacin isn’t working either as the Hartig baby is getting worse. Perhaps it isn’t a bacterial infection. House performs an autopsy on Baby Chin-Lopino and devises a theory that it is a virus and not a bacteria that is affecting the babies’ hearts. Foreman complains that it could be a 1000 viruses. However, with the amount of blood in the babies’ bodies, they can only run five or six tests. So House tries to narrow down the list of possibilities, and end up with eight. That is still too many with a limited amount of blood to be drawn. Chase gets to work. House also has Cuddy take blood from the one healthy newborn in the hospital to use as a control group.

The sick babies all test positive for Echo virus 11, CMV AND Parvo virus B19. The healthy baby tested positive for Echo and CMV antibodies. House realizes that these infants still have their mothers’ blood and immune systems, so he orders a test on the mothers to see what they have antibodies for. Whatever the women are missing is what is killing their kids. After more testing, the doctors settle on Echo virus 11. They have an experimental anti-virus in the hospital and give it a shot.

Chase and Foreman bring good news to the Hartigs. Their baby is recovering. All of the babies are recovering. That night, House observes an elderly maternity ward nurse coughing and wiping her nose as she pushes around a cart of baby toys and blankets.

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Episode 5:

DAMNED IF YOU DO
Aired 12/14/04
House’s new patient, Sister Augustine, has hands red with boils. While her fellow nuns suspect stigmata, House suspects dermatitis brought on by an allergic reaction to dish soap. He gives her an antihistamine, suggests over-the-counter cortisone cream and sends the good Sister on her way. Unfortunately, the antihistamine leaves Sister Augustine gasping for air. House believes it is an asthma attack caused by an allergic reaction to the pill. He notices a rapid heartbeat and calls for a nurse.

Dr. Cuddy is certain that House made a mistake and maybe gave the nun the wrong dosage. Cuddy will have to notify hospital attorneys within 24 hours if House can’t find an underlying cause for the heart failure. He runs his team through possible explanations. Cameron wonders if it is a disease that gives patients only five years to live with treatment. Foreman goes the easier route -- House merely messed up.

Sister Augustine goes into MRI, but inside the tube she becomes frantic about a smell. The doctors cancel the test and Sister Augustine screams that Jesus is coming for her. Suddenly, she suffers convulsions. Foreman notices a rash appear on the Sister’s leg as he’s holding her down. He finds out that the nun tested positive for herpetic encephalitis which causes a weakened immune system. This same symptom can be triggered by the medicine House gave her earlier. The group tries to figure out other possible causes.

Mixed connective tissue disease? The treatment for that disease is prednisone, which caused these problems in the first place. House recommends a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, but Foreman is concerned that will make things even worse. Foreman goes to Cuddy and she becomes alarmed at the rash hyperbaric treatment. Cuddy pulls House off Sister Augustine’s case.

Cuddy meets with Cameron, Foreman and Chase to discuss potential treatments. House, meanwhile, asks Chase if Sister Augustine is hiding something. Chase suggests talking to the Mother Superior, and House pays a visit to the convent. Mother Superior discusses Augustine’s troubled past as a foster child and the woman’s self-aborted pregnancy. That doesn’t interest House, but the tasty tea that the convent serves does.

It is figwort tea, which when mixed with even the smallest level of epinephrine causes instant cardiac arrest. House was correct all along. However, there is some allergy still lurking that has gone untreated for so long that it has manifested into a monster. House decides to introduce various allergens until one causes a reaction. Sister Augustine is placed into a hypoallergenic room but still goes into convulsions. The doctors are baffled. What in this sterile environment could make a person react so violently?

Sister Augustine decides that God wants to take her, so she requests to go back to the convent. House yells at her for constantly running away from her problems. Sister Augustine mentions that she has God inside her, which gives House a revelation. Examining x-rays, the doctors find a copper cross IUD inside Sister Augustine’s uterus. She is allergic to copper.

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Episode 6:

THE SOCRATIC METHOD
Aired 12/21/04
A mother, Lucille Palmeiro, is hearing voices in her head. She feels a sharp pain in her leg, which turns out to be a blood clot. At the same time, Lucille’s son, Luke, is working with a disability counselor to keep his mother’s benefit checks coming in. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia last year. The clot moves to the Lucille’s lungs and she collapses.

After Lucille is stabilized, a doctor explains her condition to Luke. The doctor is concerned that Luke is giving his mother alcohol, which he claims calms her down. House, overhearing the doctor’s lecture, takes an interest in the case.

Why did this 38-year old woman develop a deep vein thrombosis? Dr. Wilson thinks House’s only attraction to the case is the schizophrenia. House claims otherwise and drops in on the patient, which shocks Foreman and Chase. During his visit, House learns that Lucille has tremors which prevent her from shaving her legs. She must be bleeding more when she cuts herself. House orders a round of blood work.

Foreman tries to draw blood, but Lucille resists, exclaiming that they’re going to steal it. She has to be forcibly restrained. Luke is upset with House for giving his mother Haldol to knock her out. She claims that Haldol makes her soul numb. That night, Lucille begins vomiting huge amounts of blood.

House upbraids Foreman for the dose of Haldol. House wonders if a Vitamin K deficiency explains the delay between the blood test and the vomiting. Foreman and Chase check the patient’s home for any unused Anbecillin, which was prescribed earlier this year for a sore throat. Foreman finds a strongbox filled with meds, including an untouched bottle of Anbecillin. They also find a freezer loaded with microwave burgers. Luke says that’s all she eats. House’s theory about Vitamin K is becoming stronger.

Chase refuses to believe that the cause is merely a Vitamin K deficiency. He’s sticking with alcohol as the cause. Chase and Cameron ultrasound Lucille’s liver and find cirrhosis and a cancerous tumor. She needs a transplant because the tumor’s size is past surgical guidelines. House suggests injecting ethanol into the tumor to temporarily shrink it so that the surgeon is fooled.

The surgeon operates, but is angry about House falsely shrinking the tumor. Social Services shows up to take Luke away. House starts to wonder if Lucille is actually crazy. That night, House accuses her of calling Social Services so that somebody will take care of her son. House agrees with the call, but that is a sane decision made from self sacrifice, and that doesn’t fit in with schizophrenia.

Late that night, House has a revelation and begins calling Lucille’s old doctors. They all hang up on him because it’s so late. House thinks a specialist made an easy diagnosis. He gathers his team to search for other explanations to her symptoms. Wilson’s disease is marked by high copper levels in the body. That does explain the cirrhosis. Seeing that Lucille cancelled an eye exam last year, they give her a quick test. The copper-colored rings around her corneas are a dead giveaway. The doctors start treating her for Wilson’s disease.

Within a few days, a perfectly cogent Lucille is happily reunited with Luke. And House takes the blame for the call to Social Services.

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Episode 7:

FIDELITY
Aired 12/28/04
After a morning romp with his wife, a man named Ed returned home to find his spouse sick in bed. Elise has remained there for days. At the hospital, Cameron tells House that the patient has been sleeping 18 hours a day, but the tests don’t reveal anything.

House and his team go through the possibilities -- Depression? Parasites? House orders new blood work and another MRI. After more testing, Elise is told that there is no answer to her neurological problems. She goes into seizures.

House starts to suspect breast cancer. He also inquires about Elise’s relationship with her husband. Cameron sets up a mammogram, and Elise reveals that her mother was about the same age when she died of cancer. The new tests show no tumors. Wilson thinks it’s a small cell tumor, which is hard to locate. House wants to ignore the tumor until it gets bigger. House sends Foreman to Elise’s workplace at a restaurant. The chef is adamant that the kitchen is perfectly clean.

Cameron is talking to Elise when she complains that her arm itches. Elise then sees her arm burst open and hundreds of ants crawl out. She screeches for the doctors to get them off her. Yet she is only hallucinating. Tests are still inconclusive. House believes that all of Elise’s symptoms fit in with an African sleeping sickness. However, she has never been to Africa and never had a transfusion.

Cameron, Foreman and Chase consider amongst themselves to start treatments anyway, but each of those treatments would cause more problems. House then has a brainstorm. Anything that’s in the blood can be transmitted through sex. He dispatches Foreman and Chase to ask Ed and Elise about their fidelity. They both adamantly deny any affairs.

Elise drops into a coma. The doctors still have no explanation. Again, Ed claims he has not had an affair. House tells Ed that he is going to give her a potentially fatal medicine and needs his consent. If Ed suspects there might have even been one time Elise was unfaithful, then they need to start treatment immediately. Foreman and Chase inject the dangerous medicine.

Elise’s fever rises to 104. Just as House is telling Ed that they should have seen an improvement, Elise comes out of her coma. House tells Elise that he must know who she had an affair with so that the man can be alerted and given treatment. Elise cries, knowing that Ed has left her. Cameron tracks down Elise’s former lover, who has a young son.

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Episode 8:

POISON
Aired 1/25/05
A student named Matt begins sweating and grimacing during a test. He stands up and passes out. His body goes into convulsions. Foreman presents the case to House. Matt has a severe case of bradycardia, which means that his heart rate is falling fast. House thinks it’s simply drug use. While Chase is examining the boy, he begins seizing again.

On House’s orders, Foreman and Cameron inspect Matt’s home for signs of drug use. They turn up nothing, but Cameron does find a jar of tomato sauce with the lid popped. This could indicate a bacterial infestation. House says the seizures rule out food borne toxins. Or drug use, as Foreman points out. They suspect some sort of poison.

Matt is hooked up to an IV of pralidoxime. Chase tells the boy’s mother that the blood work is conclusive that an organophosphate is causing Matt’s trouble. Suddenly, Matt’s heart rate plummets. Chase puts zoll pads on Matt’s chest and their electricity brings his heart rate back up.

The doctors are stumped. Foreman mentions an experimental treatment that should work, but they need to know the exact poison. Foreman and Cameron go back to the kid’s house to see what kind of pesticides might be used on the tomato garden. Cameron finds an empty can of disulfoton. Chase prepares an injection of disulfoton hydrolase, but Matt’s mother insists he only used orange peel oil on the garden. He dumped the disulfoton out because he couldn’t use pesticides in his environmental science class. Since the hydrolase would increase the toxicity if they’re wrong, Mom begs Chase not to inject her son.

Cuddy tells House that he will need to get the mother to sign off on rejection of the treatment. He changes the legal language to be slightly more condescending when reading it to her. Mom changes her position. But before they can start Matt on the hydrolase, another patient named Chi is admitted with identical symptoms. Although the two have never had any contact, they do go to the same school.

Chase and Cameron inspect the school bus that Matt and Chi both rode that morning. The driver noticed a truck spraying near a pond. The country had been spraying ethyl-parathion to fight West Nile virus. There is a hydrolase for that, but Matt’s mother refuses all treatments until she hears from the Centers for Disease Control. Cameron is sent in to talk to her, and she still refuses until an angry Cameron lays it out for her. Mom finally relents.

They administer the hydrolase. Later, both boys go into convulsions. The doctors save them, but the boys are left in terrible shape. It wasn’t ethyl-parathion. They were poisoned in the morning at home. What’s the answer? The lanolin in acne cream or deodorant? Foreman and Cameron head out on another inspection. They find a 128-ounce bottle of TKO detergent in each house. But Chi’s mom says her son wore all-new clothes today that had never been washed. House and Chase salvage Chi’s and Matt’s clothes from the trash and run tests on them. They test positive for phosdrin. Time for another hydrolase.

Matt’s Mom again rejects treatment until she hears from the CDC. House visits her once again. But instead of merely talking, he decides to just sit in the room with the medicine to pressure Mom. As House predicted, the CDC claims they can’t diagnose simply by records. The mother agrees to the third hydrolase. Yet Chase had called her using a fake accent to tell her that the CDC had no opinion. The third time is indeed the charm, as Matt and Chi both recover.

Foreman learns that somebody was selling pants out of the back of his truck. The person’s second job was at a cornfield. Some pesticide was spilled on the pants, which weren’t washed. The boys were poisoned that way.

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Episode 9:

DNR
Aired 2/1/05
A famous and wheelchair-bound horn player named John Henry Giles plays with a band. By mid-session he loses his breath and passes out from a lack of oxygen. At the hospital, House wants a piece of the case. He’s intrigued that John Henry has been paralyzed for two years without explanation. Cuddy tells House that they’re only treating John Henry for pneumonia. The man’s paralysis was treated by his primary doctor, Marty Hamilton, in Los Angeles. Foreman did his residency with Dr. Hamilton.

Per Dr. Hamilton’s request, House’s team starts searching for causes. Hamilton had already diagnosed the paralysis as an effect of ALS, so pneumonia is a possible answer. House doesn’t buy this, and seeks other explanations for the paralysis. He suggests an MRI. As Foreman does up the blood work, John Henry requests a “Do Not Resuscitate” order. Foreman has John Henry put on an IVIG, which later causes him to crash because blood can’t get to his lungs. Chase wants to intubate, but Foreman mentions the DNR. House intubates anyway.

Foreman yells at House for saving a patient who chose not to be saved. House reasons that it was the IVIG that caused the reaction, not the disease. Foreman angrily points out that this was House’s fault because he suggested the treatment. House is hit with a restraining order to stay away from John Henry. Criminal charges for battery will be filed. House presses on, ordering Cameron and Chase to consider other possibilities. Cuddy supports House in his case. Yet Foreman has called Dr. Hamilton, who is now flying in from Los Angeles.

In court, the hospital lawyer argues that Houses has the right to face his accuser. Since John Henry is on life support, the trial will have to wait. Back at the hospital, Chase sees on the lung biopsy that there is only inflammation. Since House can’t order more testing, he begins blind treatment. He suggests starting John Henry on cytoxan, which treats Wegener’s disease. If House is right, John Henry will start walking again. If he’s wrong, Cameron and Chase could lose their medical licenses.

House is about to administer the cytoxan when Dr. Hamilton shows up. Hamilton, who only calls House by his first name, says that he had initially checked for Wegener’s. House reminds Hamilton of the error rate that occurs in those blood tests and biopsies. Hamilton wants to pull the plug. House tells Wilson that if it is indeed Wegener’s, John Henry’s lungs won’t be able to handle the stress and he’ll die. When he is removed from life support, John Henry starts to breathe on his own. House was wrong about Wegener’s disease.

With John Henry’s arm now paralyzed, everybody but House is convinced he’s stricken with ALS. House asks for more thinking. The battery charges have been dropped, so House can treat John Henry once again. House visits the patient, who admits that since he can’t play the trumpet any more, he doesn’t mind dying. House asks John Henry to just let him find out what’s afflicting him. If he still wants to die, House will help make it quick and painless. House puts John Henry into an MRI.

Hamilton offers Foreman a job that pays three times what he now makes and includes many other perks. Foreman mentions the offer to Cameron and Chase, who point out that they don’t do this for the money. They also don’t hate House like Foreman does. Looking over John Henry’s MRI, Cameron notices sign of a stroke. That would explain the paralyzed arm. Foreman explains the options to John Henry. They can give him heparin to thin his blood and remove the clot, but it could hurt his lungs. Another option is to go in for brain surgery and take the clot out. Not wanting to risk his lungs, John Henry opts for the surgery.

The surgery is a success. John Henry can move his arm following the embolectomy and he feels it when House touches his leg. The doctors are baffled. Hamilton thinks his ALS treatments are the answer. House thinks they need to take John Henry off the dozen drugs they’re currently giving him in order to restart the dosage one by one to see which is having the effect. If not, the toxicity of the useless drugs could kill him.

Hamilton asks House which medications he had been treating John Henry with. House resists, but then realizes that Hamilton needs to know because the patient is worsening. He can’t feel his leg anymore. House prescribes steroids and a second MRI. Meanwhile, House and Foreman discuss their working relationship. House tells Foreman to take the new job if Hamilton is a better doctor.

The MRI results show that John Henry suffers from Arteriovenous Malformation. It was compressing his spine, which caused the paralysis. Foreman wonders how Hamilton could have missed something so simple. House points out that they all missed it too, so something must have been hiding it. It was the inflammation that they first saw on the lung biopsy. The steroids treated the inflammation and allowed the AVM to show on the MRI. After surgery to remove the AVM, John Henry walks out of the hospital with a simple cane, not a wheelchair.

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Episode 10:

HISTORIES
Aired 2/8/05
A woman is desperate to score some drugs. She heads to a house rave to get her fix, but doesn’t have the $20 to get in. She begs to be allowed in to see her dealer, James. Once inside, the cops bust the party and the woman freaks out.

Wilson sums up her case for Foreman. A homeless woman was admitted with a suspected overdose. She has no ID and doesn’t seem to know her name. She’s got lesions on her skin and a twitchy wrist. Foreman is not happy to be handed this case. When the women seizes, he is skeptical that she’s not merely acting. Foreman inspects her purse for insulin, suspecting diabetes.

Wilson goes to House for a second opinion. Foreman refuses to back down. House is more interested in who this woman is and her history. The next day, Chase sees the woman drawing and asks, “Who’s James?” She freaks out and bites Foreman when he tries to help, drawing blood. Foreman bucks the rules to get the patient into an immediate MRI, using another person’s name and appointment time. Cuddy shuts the MRI down before they can proceed because a CT scan shows that the patient has a surgical pin in her arm. The MRI would’ve ripped it out of her body. They can’t proceed until they know who this woman is.

Using one of the woman’s sketches as a clue, Foreman checks out a neighborhood. A homeless man directs him to a box where she lived. Foreman finds the box infested with bats. He also finds more sketches.

House removes the surgical pin and runs the serial number on it to learn that the patient broke her arm in a car accident on October 2, 2002. House confesses that he only wanted the MRI so he’d have an excuse to take out the surgical pin. The patient’s name is Victoria Matson. Foreman checks out Victoria’s blood work and realizes that she’s allergic to iron dextran, which they were administering to treat low magnesium and electrolytes. They find Victoria in respiratory arrest due to the allergic reaction, but the doctors are able to save her.

Cameron has various records for Victoria Matson from area hospitals. There is nothing alarming, except for one ultrasound performed and one ultrasound appointment cancelled. Wilson suspects that doctors were looking for ovarian cancer. House orders an ultrasound of her ovaries. The test indeed shows cancer. House wonders if it’s a tuberculoma mass, admitting that it’s a long shot. He instructs his charge to start Victoria on INH, rifampin and streptomycin to treat tuberculoma.

Foreman tries to give Victoria some antibiotics, and inquires about James. She has another fit. Victoria now thinks the sunlight is burning her and that the water they gave her is poison. Foreman sedates her, reporting to House that she has a fever of 105. It can’t be tuberculoma, because the treatment isn’t working. Chase has the lab report from Victoria’s biopsy. It is tuberculoma. House is confused why he was right about the diagnosis but its treatment is killing Victoria.

The team sets off to figure out what else Victoria has that would cause this reaction. If it’s bacterial infection, then they would need to order a blood and urine test, plus a chest X-ray. The doctors also put her on an ice bath to fight the fever. The tests show nothing significant. House’s crew suspects meningitis, but when they go to Victoria’s room she is gone. Yet she drew a comic strip on the wall depicting a superhero who is searching for James. After a time, paramedics bring a semi-conscious Victoria into the hospital. Her heart is racing.

House realizes that Victoria’s heart was racing because a cop tasered her. However, she didn’t feel it hit her thigh because she has no sensitivity there. He takes a needle and pokes Foreman in the wrist where Victoria bit him earlier. He doesn’t feel it either. Finally, Houses knows that it is rabies that has been afflicting Victoria. Although it is incredibly rare, a homeless person wouldn’t get shots after being bitten. The bats in Victoria’s cardboard box are the most likely culprit. Unfortunately, it’s too late for treatment and Victoria will die in the next day or two.

Foreman, meanwhile, gets a shot in the gut to treat his rabies and then sets out to find the mysterious James. Foreman and Wilson head to the rave party house, and using more of Victoria’s sketches as a guide, find a strongbox that contains photos of a normal Victoria looking happy with some man. They also find a marriage certificate for Victoria and a man named Paul, as well as a birth certificate for James, her son. They dig up a newspaper clipping about the car crash in which Victoria broke her arm. Paul and James were killed in the wreck where she was driving.

Foreman goes to Victoria’s bedside, claiming to be Paul. He tells her that he’s come to forgive her for the accident. In her stupor, she believes him and tearfully apologizes.

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Episode 11:

DETOX
Aired 2/15/05
A teenage couple decides to go for a drive in his dad’s Porsche. The boy, named Keith, begins choking and coughing up blood. Distracted, the girl spins the car out and they are broadsided by a bus.

Cameron presents the case: the 16-year old victim of M.V.A. has been in an out of the hospital with internal bleeding for three weeks. House attributes it to the car crash, but Cameron says the bleeding started before the crash. House is more interested in getting his Vicodin prescription refilled but the pharmacy is empty. Cuddy sees House popping more Vicodin and challenges him to quit his addiction. He says he takes it to treat the pain, so she offers a month free from clinic duty if he goes a week without pills.

Cameron mentions that the victim has non-inherited hemolytic anemia, which is incredibly rare. House dismisses it as meningitis, but that’s not it either. He calls his group together and tells them they have to figure out why the patient’s red blood cells are supplying oxygen to the body. House instructs them to run tests for an infection, as well as Lupus, drug use and cancer.

In talking to the patient’s father, Cameron learns that Keith’s girlfriend was formerly in rehab and that his mother died of pancreatic cancer. The radioimmunoassay test is negative on drug use. A Gallium scan shows no infection and a radioactive isotope injected into the bloodstream shows no inflammation. The Lupus test comes up negative as well. Wilson performs a biopsy to check for lymphoma, but that too is wrong.

While the doctors mull other possibilities, Keith complains that he has something in his eye. The doctors find nothing, but Keith still can’t see. Foreman observes a retinal clot. However, any treatment for the clot would kill him because of his low blood flow. They have two hours to save either his eye or his life. House asks his team how something could be causing both internal bleeding and clotting. Infection causes clotting, so what would be hiding from the Gallium scan? It must be a cardiac clot that flicks off and travels to the eye.

Chase performs an echocardiogram on Keith’s heart, but begrudgingly admits that they are not going to treat his eye. The blindness will become permanent. Chase later tells House that the test showed no cardiac infection. House has him up the antibiotics. Chase thinks he can remove some liquid from the eye itself to make room for the clot to move out on its own. Chase leaves and House backs against a wall. He’s in tremendous pain.

With a needle, Chase removes some vitreous humor from the eye which helps Keith see again. After the procedure, Keith’s girlfriend comes in and kisses him. He vomits. The doctors rush him to the ICU. His liver is shutting down and he is dying. Keith’s father is enraged. Cameron asks House if proving Cuddy wrong is worth all of this.

The team wonders what would cause liver damage. Hemolytic anemia is ruled out. House suggests hepatitis-E, even though Lupus is more likely. House thinks they need to rule out hep-E because it has no treatment, so he instructs the group to give Keith mendrol, which will react with the hep-E to make him worse. If not, they’ll know that Lupus is the cause. Outside, Foreman tells Cameron that House is detoxing from Vicodin and is losing his mind. In his office, House sweats in pain.

Cameron tells Keith’s father that she believes his son is afflicted with Lupus. To distract himself from the pain, House smashes himself with a paperweight and breaks a bone in his hand. As Cameron is treating him, Cuddy demands to know why House had Cameron lie. Now Keith’s father wants his son either treated for Lupus or transferred. But when Cameron tells him that Keith is too weak to be moved, he relents.

Chase and Cameron prepare to begin the treatment and Keith starts to hallucinate. Cameron notices that Keith is bleeding profusely from the rectum and is going into hypovolemic shock. An angiography later reveals major internal bleeding, severe hemodynamic compromise and complete liver failure. Cameron says that hallucinations are from psychosis, which proves that Lupus is the cause. She’s angry that they had to dally with hep-E because Keith needs a new liver. House still thinks Lupus is the wrong diagnosis, but he asks for Keith to be moved to the top of transplant list anyway.

In his office, House vomits from the pain. Foreman comes in with a bottle of Vicodin so that he can recover to treat Keith. Cameron and Chase break it to Keith’s father that the Lupus is too advanced to treat and the transplant list has over 15,000 patients. House is still pondering who the “Jules” is that Keith yelled out during his hallucination. Keith’s father informs them that Jules is their cat who died about a month ago. The girlfriend says that Jules slept in the bed with Keith.

Foreman and Chase exhume the cat. House does an autopsy. At the same time, an emergency liver comes in. Keith is taken into the OR and is prepped. Houses rushes in to stop the surgery, announcing that Keith doesn’t have lupoid Hepatitis. He has acute naphthalene toxicity from termites. Termites create the toxin to protect their nests, and judging from the contents of Jules’ stomach, Keith’s bedroom was also infested with termites. The surgeon refuses to stop, so House spits on him to spread germs everywhere.

In the hallway, the group refuses to believe House’s new diagnosis. If it was environmental, Keith would have improved in the hospital. But House explains that naphthalene is fat soluble. Keith was repulsed by the hospital food and hadn’t eaten much, so his body started burning fat and the poison poured into his system. Keith’s father punches House in the face. House promises that 24 hours of calorie intake will heal Keith. If they do the surgery, it won’t solve anything.

Foreman and Chase hammer open a wall in Keith’s home bedroom. Termites pour out. House was right. Back at the hospital, Keith is rapidly improving. And House made it through the week without any pills. He comes to the realization that he’s addicted, but since he is functioning he’ll just keep taking the drugs. Wilson yells at him for changing in the last few years and becoming miserable. He’s using his leg and the drugs as an excuse.

_________________
House is awesome. Dont hate

Episode 12:

SPORTS MEDICINE
Aired 2/22/05
A baseball player named Hank Wiggen shoots an anti-drug commercial but it’s not going well. The director tries to provide some help, but Hank doesn’t grasp what to do until his wife, Lola, advises him to just tell his own story. Hank got mixed up in drugs and only quit because he was going to die. Now he’s clean and getting ready to pitch on Opening Day. On the next take, Hank throws a pitch and his upper arm breaks. His comeback is over.

At the hospital, Wilson tells House that he thinks Hank has osteopenia but that his bones are too thin to be fixed. Since Hank is young, House feels that cancer is the cause and Wilson hasn’t found the cancer yet. The rest of the staff agrees that it must be cancer. Looking at Hank’s baseball card, House notices that Hank put on 25 pounds after spending the previous season in a Japanese league. The doctors suspect steroids, which would explain the kidney problems and bone loss.

Chase wants a urine sample but Hank isn’t willing. Chase just takes some from Hank’s catheter bag. Cameron and Foreman report to House that tests showed there are no steroids, but that that Hank has elevated levels of Beta 2 proteins. He could have either amyloidosis or lymphoma. House still believes that steroids have come into play. Foreman admits that the FAT PAD biopsy and abdominal CT scan were negative for cancers, but Cameron points out that Hank also tested negative for steroids. House knows that today’s steroids can be hidden from tests, but one thing can’t be hidden. House goes into Hank’s room and pulls back the bed sheet. Hank suffers from hypogonadism, which is shrunken testicles. House has them start Hank on Lupron. Hank’s wife Lola is outraged.

If Hank isn’t on steroids, Lupron will cause severe respiratory problems. Sure enough, Hank begins to gasp for air. House and staff try to figure out what’s killing Hank. He isn’t producing enough testosterone which is causing the hypogonadism. Chase suggests that it could be Addison’s disease, which is treated with steroids. But Foreman mentions that Addison’s would cause him to retain fluid, and that would overwork Hank’s strained kidneys. What exactly is creating the kidney problems? House suggests past steroid use.

House drops in on Hank and Lola to explain the situation. He can keep denying steroid use, but that may be the trigger to all his health problems and it is treatable. If there is no steroid use, then the doctors are at a loss on what is causing the liver to malfunction. He could die. Lola is adamant that her husband is telling the truth, but Hank finally opens up. He admits that five years ago, a pitching coach gave him something that made him gain twelve pounds of muscle in a month. Hank has no idea what it was.

House presses Cuddy to put Hank on the transplant list, but she won’t budge. She wants evidence of Addison’s disease or anything else life-threatening. Lola tells House she wants to donate one of her own kidneys, and he is skeptical that she’ll be a donor match. After some time, House gets back the lab results. Although Lola is a match, she’s pregnant and cannot donate in her current condition. The next day, Foreman tells Hank that he’s healthy enough for the transplant. Hank forbids his wife to get an abortion in order to undergo the surgery. House thinks he’s being ridiculous, but Cameron isn’t so sure. They haven’t even narrowed the diagnosis to Addison’s disease yet.

Hank’s heart starts racing. His T-waves have peaked and his potassium is up. Chase and Foreman give him insulin sub q, D-50 glucose and kayexolate to treat hyperkalemia and get the potassium out. They think this will rule out both Addison’s and steroids. House and Cameron arrive to find Hank’s heart rate dropping precipitously. They have no idea what’s afflicting Hank and they can’t stabilize his heart rate.

That night, House observes Hank and notices he is hallucinating. Wilson wonders whether it is digitalis, which would explain the heart rate fluctuation and this new symptom, but not the earlier ones. Hank is not even on digitalis. House pays a visit to Warner, the scout that discovered Hank and was on the set of the commercial. Warner tells House that he has a heart condition and treats it with digitalis. However, he can’t find the bottle. House thinks Hank stole the pills and tried to kill himself with the drug.

Back at the hospital, House lays it out for Hank. He knows what he did and he’s scheduling the transplant. Hank wants Lola to have the baby. Making his point, he spills some of his urine bag on House’s pants. House will begin treating for Addison’s disease, which will ruin the patient’s kidneys. House runs into Lola in the hallway and tells her about Hank. When he says she should keep her baby, Lola hugs him. House wonders why she didn’t smell the urine that Hank splashed on him.

House tracks down his group. They eliminated environmental causes because they thought Lola was healthy. She hasn’t been able to smell anything for six months. The group should now consider this couple as a single patient. Their symptoms point to cadmium poisoning. Chase visits Hank to get another urine sample and asks what they should be looking for this time. Hank admits he’s still using marijuana from the dealer he and Lola shared in Japan. She quit but he didn’t. Chase points out that if there’s cadmium in the soil, the marijuana can cause all of these symptoms. Chase puts Hank on treatment for cadmium poisoning. However, House writes on the medical report that it is Addison’s disease so that Hank can avoid a drug ban from Major League Baseball.

_________________
House is awesome. Dont hate

Episode 13:

CURSED
Aired 3/1/05
Two 12 year-olds walking home from school sneak into an abandoned building to join their friends for beer and cigarettes. One of the boys, Gabriel Reilich, trips and falls on the old, wooden floor. Later that week, Gabe develops a rash on his arm. His worried mother, Sarah, takes him to the hospital, concerned with the fever he’s had all week. Gabe tries to get out of bed, but collapses on the floor.

Cuddy reads Gabe’s file to House, who assumes the boy merely has pneumonia. This can only be considered important only because Gabe’s parents are big donors to the hospital. Yet when Cuddy describes Gabe’s rash as a papular lesion on the arm, House becomes suddenly interested. He and the team try to figure out which kind of pneumonia would cause this rash. Foreman suggests Chlamydia pneumonia, but 12 year-olds don’t have much sex. Could the rash have come first? Then Lyme disease is a possibility. House instructs the doctors to keep Gabe on cefuroxime, biopsy the rash and gather another patient history.

As Chase takes fluid from the rash, Gabe’s father, Jeffrey, angrily demands to know what they are doing. Chase wheels Gabe off for a private conversation. While the two bond Gabe admits to Chase that he fell in the abandoned building and scraped his arm. He also remembers it smelling moldy up in the attic. Chase is about to head out to take a sample from the building when Dr. Rowan Chase enters House’s office. He is Chase’s father. Chase brusquely leaves, not exchanging any pleasantries with his father.

After Chase returns with samples of the felt-based insulation between the floorboards of the abandoned building, House realizes that the old insulation is made from animal hair. He then notices Anthrax on Gabe’s CT scan. Cameron rushes out to put Gabe on levaquin and move him to the ICU. Jeffrey can’t believe his son has Anthrax poisoning, and he asks about leishmaniasis and filariasis, which he looked up on the internet. Meanwhile, Gabe struggles to breathe. Foreman sticks a laryngoscope into the boy’s mouth to open his throat. Yet he can’t insert an endotracheal tube. Chase is about to administer an emergency tracheotomy when Foreman’s intubation finally works.

The team tries to figure out what caused the swollen throat nodule reaction. Is it an allergy? House wants to consult with Rowan, Chase’s father. Everyone except the obstinate Chase moves off of the Anthrax diagnosis and they run tests for sarcoidosis, which makes the body’s tissues swell up. But before Foreman can administer anti-inflammatory medicine, Chase notices that Gabe’s rash has turned black. This is a sure sign of Anthrax, even though throat nodules are a sure sign it isn’t Anthrax. Everyone offers dissimilar opinions. Rowan Chase suggests Anthrax plus sarcoidosis. His son insists that both diseases are too rare to occur at the same time, and offers up an allergy plus Anthrax. House thinks the Anthrax damaged Gabe’s immune system enough to trigger a dormant sarcoidosis. He instructs them to keep Gabe on antibiotics for Anthrax and start him on methotrexate for the sarcoidosis. They can wait to see what happens.

Jeffrey is furious. He tracks down House and demands to know why he’s experimenting on his son without even seeing him. Jeffrey also protests that he gives to the hospital solely to get immediate attention. He shows off his wrist as an example. After six months of diagnoses that told him to rest, Jeffrey wrote a big check and was admitted to surgery for carpal tunnel that afternoon.

Gabe has now developed hideous looking fatty red nodules on his back and the lesions are spreading all over his body. Rowan Chase advocates that it’s an autoimmune problem. The body is working so hard on attacking the Anthrax that it’s also attacking itself. Autoimmune problems could indicate almost anything, so they start Gabe on steroids and cytoxan. Chase, meanwhile, conducts a biopsy on Gabe’s lesions in an attempt to prove his father wrong. Although Gabe’s swelling is down and his skin looks better, Chase shows his father an ANA test that shows no autoimmune disease. Rowan Chase counters that ANAs are unreliable. Chase demands to know why his father is even here.

House tracks down Rowan in the hall. He noticed a blue dot on his neck, which is a tattoo for guiding radiation treatment. Rowan admits to House that he terminal stage four lung cancer.

Chase tests Gabe for every possible autoimmune condition, and the boy senses that he can’t move his hand. His right hand and forearm are now paralyzed and the fever has kicked in again. Chase claims that toxic neuropathy was brought on by the cytoxan. Cameron wonders what brain process would cause paralysis, skin lesions and throat nodules. Rowan realizes that his son’s diagnosis -- multiple neurofibromatosis -- might be correct. House orders another CT scan.

The test shows no masses or fibrous tangles. It isn’t neurofibromatosis. It could possibly be Burger’s Disease, but Gabe has never left the country. The team considers the parents, and House remembers Jeffrey mentioning leishmaniasis and filariasis, which are two diseases basically exclusive to Southeast Asia. They consider whether Anthrax didn’t trigger the second disease, but the hospital treatment or antibiotics did. House heads to Gabe’s room and grabs Jeffrey’s wrist. How did he know about those obscure diseases? House tells Jeffrey that if he doesn’t tell the truth, Gabe will die. Jeffrey breaks down and confesses that he spent two years in India. After joining an ashram, he ended up losing all his money. He was too embarrassed to admit his failure to his family.

House tells his staff to run a FITE stain to check for leprosy. This could have weakened Gabe’s immune system and enabled the Anthrax. Although the antibiotics they administered would stave off the leprosy, the dying bacteria produce antibodies which eventually attack the body’s neural and fat cells. This would cause inflammation and all the other symptoms Gabe was suffering from. House orders Cameron to get the boy some thalidomide.

Gabe improves and his father is also treated for leprosy. That night, Chase sees Rowan off as he heads to the airport. Chase promises to visit him in the next year. Rowan stares at his son but doesn’t admit that he likely won’t live that long. Chase hugs his father, not knowing that it is the last time he will see him.

_________________
House is awesome. Dont hate

Episode 14:

CONTROL
Aired 3/15/05
Carly, a thirty-something female CEO, is in the middle of a confident pitch to the board when she starts trembling. Suddenly, she can’t move her leg. House gives his verdict to the team: paralysis and severe pain in the right quad. Cameron wonders if she has the same clot in her thigh that House had. House orders an angiogram to test for a clot. If that test is clean, then she’ll be given an MRI to check for spinal pressure. If that one also turns out negative, then they will biopsy the leg. Chase oversees Carly’s x-ray. While he flirts with the technician, Chase doesn’t notice that the machine took a shot of Carly’s left thigh.

Meanwhile, Cuddy announces that Edward Vogler, a large donor to the hospital, has been made the new chairman of the board. Vogler wants to make the hospital a cutting-edge research center where people without a prayer could go for help. The hospital will have a blank check to fight Alzheimer’s, cancer, MS, AIDS and other such diseases.

House sees a young patient named Ricky van der Meer who suffers from a sore throat. Yet what’s more interesting is that the boy’s father had knee surgery a year ago and hasn’t been able to speak since then. House checks in with Dr. Simpson, who operated on young Ricky’s father. All Dr. Simpson has to say is that Mr. van der Meer received $1 million for a malpractice settlement when they couldn’t find a thing wrong with him.

Cuddy catches up with Dr. House and tells him that Vogler wants him to start wearing a lab coat. House scoffs, complaining that Vogler will now start using the hospital’s patients for clinical trials. They will be treated like lab rats who are pressured into treatments that are bad for them but good for study. Cuddy realizes that all Vogler is doing is upping the ante on House’s game. House thinks Vogler will ruin the hospital.

In her room, Carly is in severe pain when Foreman arrives to tell her the tests were negative. She screams in agony. House reconvenes with his staff. Chase announces that her angiogram shows no signs of neurogenic or myopathic abnormalities. Foreman says tests for trichinosis, toxoplasmosis and polyarteris nodosa are negative as well. House asks Wilson about a possible bone scan to check for underlying cancers. Wilson warns him to keep his head down until Edward Volger is settled in.

Wilson stops by to see Carly. There is no cancer in her bone, but she might be having referred pain from cancer in another part of the body. Carly’s mom died young from cancer, and she rejects Wilson’s suggestion of a colonoscopy. Carly refuses to be examined. Wilson then presses for a very expensive virtual colonoscopy. She relents.

Wilson lets House know that there’s no colon cancer according to the virtual scope, and that Carly doesn’t want a physical scope. House wonders what Carly is so embarrassed about. He reconvenes his staff and notices something odd about her x-ray. Chase angioed the wrong leg. House sees Jenny’s signature on the report and realizes exactly what happened. He orders Foreman to do a new angio.

Foreman is administering the new test when Carly complains that she can’t breathe. Her lungs fill with fluid. Foreman performs a thoracentesis to drain the fluid and results on the fluid should be back from the lab soon. On the plus side, the angio revealed no clot. House is distracted, staring at a board with Carly’s symptoms listed. He erases everything and writes, “Psych symptoms: Withholds pain, control, shame.” House then looks in on Carly as she sleeps. Examining her leg, he notices seven half-inch cuts in a perfect row on the thigh. She’s a cutter.

House catches up with Wilson at lunch. Besides hinting that Carly has a broken heart, he is reluctant to tell him more. With new management practices, Wilson would be obligated to tell others. Chase and Cameron approach with news. The thoracentesis has revealed a congestive heart transplant. Carly needs an actual new heart.

Vogler questions Cuddy on what the Department of Diagnostic Medicine is. It’s House’s department. Vogler thinks it’s a financial black hole, requiring $3 million a year to treat one patient per week. Cuddy argues that House saves one patient per week. Vogler asks why House isn’t wearing his lab coat. Doesn’t he respect Cuddy?

House tells Carly that she needs a transplant. She points out that she’s a runner, but House counters that she’s a high-powered bulimic. Since scarred knuckles are unseemly, she’s been using Ipecac, which caused muscle damage. This created the pain in her leg and destroyed her heart. She admits that she does it three times a week. House tells her that he has an emergency meeting with the transplant committee to see where Carly would fall on the list. Normally, she would be ranked high because she has about a day to live. However, the bulimia makes her a risk, like a suicidal patient. Would House lie to the committee?

She asks what he wants. He wants to know whether she really wants to live or die. She breaks down and says she doesn’t want to die. Later, House stands before the committee, which Vogler is observing. Cuddy asks if Carly has any exclusion criteria. Wilson subtly tries to shake House off, but he says there are no exclusionary causes. Cuddy warns him of disciplinary action for subverting the committee. He denies any outside factors.

After the meeting, Wilson yells at House for his diversion. House gets a page that transplant surgery is getting underway. In the office, Chase wonders to Foreman and Cameron why House would put Carly on the transplant list before the test results came back. It seems odd. Chase is also worried that he’s going to be fired. Chase does some snooping around and finds a bottle of Ipecac in Carly’s purse.

Cameron tells House that van der Meer has been on steroids. She also questions whether House will fire Chase, but House says he merely wants Chase doing everything he can to protect his job now that Vogler is looking to make cuts. House hears from the surgeon that Carly had a textbook operation. House checks in with van der Meer. He knows that being intubated during knee surgery paralyzed van der Meer’s vocal cords, but he also knows that his new treatments have healed him. Van der Meer shakes his head. House confides that he won’t have to give the settlement money back and van der Meer admits that he can speak.

House sits with Carly as she wakes up and warns her not to screw this up. He’s relaxing in his office when Vogler enters. He wants answers about Carly’s bulimia. They found the Ipecac in Carly’s purse. House notes that, since he has full tenure, Vogler would need full board approval to dump him. With Wilson and Cuddy on his side, that’s impossible. They might as well learn to live with each other. Vogler admits that he has a point. Just before leaving, Vogler mentions that it’s actually easier to get rid of a board member than it is to dump a doctor.

_________________
House is awesome. Dont hate

Episode 15:

MOB RULES
Aired 3/22/05
Young wiseguy Joey Arnello eats in a hotel room. His brother and lawyer, Bill, is trying to talk him out of testifying. Joey stands up and, feeling dizzy, collapses. Bill tries to help him but the federal agents in the room think he’s faking.

At the hospital, Vogler presses Cuddy for a budget on House’s work. House comes in with a Federal Court Order issuing him to examine their witness. House wants out of it. Cuddy tells him to either see the patient or go to jail for contempt. After House leaves in a huff, Vogler tells Cuddy she needs to get rid of House or else give Vogler one good reason why they should keep him.

House examines the comatose Joey, who is non-responsive to bright lights and pain. He is nearly dead. Bill wants to know what’s happening to his brother. House dismisses him, but Bill threatens House that Joey needs to stay in the hospital so that he can talk him out of testifying.

The MRI shows a subdural hematoma. House thinks those are pseudomembranes from an old injury, which wouldn’t cause a coma. He asks about the liver, but Chase reports that the LFTs are only slightly elevated. Foreman wants to go into Joey’s brain and evacuate the cavity, but Joey awakes and says that he doesn’t want to be drilled. With Joey awake, House’s team suggests releasing him. House overrules them, asking for hepatitis serologies and an auto-immune panel.

House learns that Vogler called admitting. They contacted the Justice Department, which came and checked out Joey. Cuddy tells Vogler that she can only control House. House demands to know who checked out Joey. Vogler says that he wanted to keep the government off the hospital’s back.

However, Joey is rushed back into the hospital. After he’s stabilized, the team begins examining his file again. Joey’s liver is worse, but with completely different symptoms. Although tests for Hepatitis C came back positive, House doesn’t think that explains the sudden onset. House orders a biopsy, but Chase suggests starting Joey on Interferon to treat the Hep C first so that he will improve faster. House tells him to start the treatment but not to credit House for it. He also wants Chase to get a biopsy while he’s at it. House then holds Foreman back from the others and announces that he is pulling him off the case because somebody told Vogler that House lied to the transplant committee about House’s last patient, Carly. House tells Foreman that he doesn’t think he was the culprit, but he wants Vogler, Cuddy and everybody else to think that’s what he believes.

Chase is in Joey’s room explaining the Hepatitis C diagnosis, but Bill becomes angry. He slaps Chase with the warning not to mention that his brother has Hep C. He demands that Joey will not be treated for it. Meanwhile, Cuddy tries to save House from Vogler’s axe. Although she hates House, she still wants to save his job. Vogler thinks that is proof that she does like him. This is bad for business.

Bill corners House about the disrespect shown to Joey over the Hep C diagnosis. House says that, between the jailhouse tattoos and blood tests, he’s guessing that Joey was raped in prison. Bill admits that he heard rumors. Yet if this diagnosis gets out, Joey’s reputation will be destroyed. House agrees to administer Interferon, but that he won’t keep records on it.

Wilson lets House know that Cuddy has been locked up with Vogler for two days arguing about House’s job. They notice a gleaming red ’65 Corvette parked in House’s spot. A note on the windshield indicates that it’s a gift from the Arnellos. Foreman rushes in with the news that Joey’s blood pressure has dropped and he is bleeding into his liver. House gets the results of Joey’s biopsy, which shows lymphocytic infiltrate and no bridging fibrosis. This means that Joey’s condition is acute and not a result of Hep C. The other finding is that exposure to toxins has caused this liver failure. He was poisoned.

Joey’s liver begins to shut down. Although they have to wait four hours until the next test results arrive, Joey’s liver will only last two hours. House has an idea. A pig is brought into the hospital and placed next to Joey. An IV runs between an artery in Joey’s leg and the pig’s liver. Cameron and Foreman continue the search for toxins. House notices from chest X-rays and white blood cell counts that Joey recently quit smoking. Outside of Joey’s room, the two federal marshals in charge of guarding him argue. One of the marshals recently deposited $3,000 in his wife’s checking account, and the other marshal questions whether it was a bribe. House interrupts them to announce that Joey took enough smoking cessation candy containing a Chinese herb to poison himself. He should be fine in a couple of hours.

That night, Wilson advises House to let Vogler tell the feds that Joey can be released since it is important to Vogler. This will also help House’s cause. The next day, House dons a lab coat and enters Cuddy’s office. He gives Vogler the news that Joey is free to go. Cuddy examines the file and wonders how lozenges would cause such liver failure. House points out that it’s a toxic match with Interferon. As Cuddy yells at House for altering Joey’s medical file, House is paged. Joey has lapsed into another coma.

The team reconvenes to discuss causes. Chase again argues for Hep C, which they never really treated. House again notes that Joey’s condition is acute and not chronic. Chase suggests an experimental treatment that’s never been tried on humans using a non-nucleoside allosteric inhibitor to change the virus. Foreman phones a hospital in Philadelphia that’s currently testing this treatment on dogs.

While seeing another patient, House has an epiphany. Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one. On the team’s white board, House crosses out liver and estrogen. A discussion with Chase leads House to start thinking about what’s causing the comas. House approaches the federal marshal that made the recent deposit. Bill interrupts, saying they just gave the marshal some money to get Joey some decent food not on the hospital menu. House sees that Joey had a steak before each coma, and he mentions Ornithine Transcarbamylase Deficiency which is a genetic condition. If the condition is in the body and a patient eats a large amount of protein, the symptoms can come out. If House is wrong and they stop treatment, Joey will die. House admits that he could be wrong because of Joey’s increased estrogen level. But he has a theory. A product called Male Flame contains estrogen. It is marketed to gay men and sold on the same website that offered Joey’s smoking cessation candy.

Bill adamantly declares that his brother isn’t gay, but House thinks this is an overreaction. If he’s so sure, they will continue Joey’s treatment. Bill finally relents and Chase shuts off Joey’s IV. Bill still can’t believe that his brother might be gay. House points out that the only way a mob guy could come out of the closet is to change his name and move to another town. This is what happens after one testifies for the government.

After a few hours, Joey pulls out of his coma. He and Bill have a last conversation about the decision to run away. Bill calls the feds to announce that they are ready to make a deal. Even though they danced around the issue, Joey smiles at his brother’s reluctant acceptance of his lifestyle.

Cuddy and House have another conversation. Cuddy says that Vogler threatened to fire her, but she told him that she was the only one who knows about the secret stuff that isn’t in the books. So Vogler needs her. She wants changes. House has to do six more clinic hours a month and he must fire someone from his team. He has to choose between Chase, Cameron or Foreman.

_________________
House is awesome. Dont hate

Episode 16:

HEAVY
Aired 3/28/05
Ten-year old Jessica Simms tells her mother that she isn’t feeling good and doesn’t want to go to school. She admits that she thinks the kids at school hate her. At school that day, Jessica is jumping rope in gym class when she complains that her chest hurts. The teacher pushes her to finish, but Jessica collapses. Her heart stops beating.

At the hospital, Cuddy asks House if he’s made a decision on who to fire per Vogler’s order. House wants to stall as long as possible, and she grants him a week. In the elevator, Cameron brings House up to date on Jessica. The team can’t believe a 10-year old would have a heart attack but six tests proved it true. Chase thinks it’s a simple case of Jessica being too obese and depressed. House though believes that Jessica’s legion of previous doctors have missed something. Foreman wonders about a genetic condition. Cameron suggests Metabolic Syndrome X, which could cause a heart attack with high enough blood pressure. House orders a hyperinsulinemic euglycemic clamp. But before dispatching his staff, he informs them that he’ll have to cut one of them by the end of the week. They’re all shocked, and Cameron and Foreman think they need to stick together through this.

Cameron explains MS-X to Jessica’s mother and says it can be controlled through diet and exercise. Mrs. Simms complains that doctors never see past Jessica’s weight. Chase and Foreman try to cajole Jessica onto a scale as part of their standard tests. Afterwards, Chase is upset that Foreman told the little girl that she will probably grow into her body. He is also annoyed that Cameron tries to sugarcoat body image. Foreman counters that Chase is probably uptight because he knows he’s the one who will be cut.

House’s team conducts the HEC test on Jessica, who freaks out and tries to rip out the IV. The doctors and Mrs. Simms all struggle to restrain her. After sedating Jessica, Foreman explains to Mrs. Simms that psychosis brought on by hypoglycemia is common during HEC tests.

From the results, House declares that Jessica isn’t hypoglycemic so her psychosis was caused by something else. Chase suggests blood clots, which Cameron shoots down. Yet it could have been brought on by liposuction, which isn’t in Jessica’s medical file. House considers other weight treatments like diet pills, which wouldn’t show up in toxicology screenings. He orders the patient to be put on heparin and warfarin to prevent further clotting, placing Foreman in charge of locating the diet pills. Foreman chides House for pitting the doctors against each other. House asks Foreman whom he would cut. Foreman nominates Chase because he believes he doesn’t appreciate the job. House says he’s surprised that Foreman would have named anybody.

Vogler questions Cuddy on House’s staff cut and what he has been telling the team. Vogler offers to help if Cameron is the one who’s let go.

Foreman asks Jessica’s schoolteacher if she ever saw Jessica with pills. He learns that Jessica doesn’t have any friends at school, so the teacher directs him to Jessica’s assigned 6th grade “buddy.” The buddy tells him that Jessica always runs laps at recess because nobody will play with her. The girl says that she totally busted Jessica taking drugs one day.

Although Mrs. Simms adamantly denies giving her daughter diet pills, Jessica admits to taking them on her own. Jessica breaks down in tears and says she took them because she feels ugly and disgusting. The pills seem to explain all of her symptoms. Yet the doctors later find Jessica with huge, bleeding sores on her body. In the office, House thinks the warfarin they gave Jessica led to skin necrosis, but Cameron says they started heparin first. House asks if anybody actually saw Cameron administer the heparin. When there’s no answer, he has the team give Jessica an unfractionated IV heparin and low molecular weight heparin by subcutaneous injection right away. Out in the hallway, Cameron lights into Chase for leaving her dangling in the meeting. The team is falling apart.

Vogler takes Foreman aside and asks if he likes working for House and values his job. Foreman responds in the affirmative.

Cameron is studying in the lab when House drops in on her to ask about the mistake with the heparin. Cameron insists that she didn’t screw up but that she doesn’t have another explanation. House then asks her who she would fire. She suggests that everyone take a pay cut so that they can all stay.

The next day, House announces to Vogler and Cuddy that he’s made his decision. He wants to push for a 17% pay cut across the board so that everybody can stay. Vogler rejects this because it’s not about the money. He wants to know that House will do whatever Vogler tells him to do, no matter how distasteful.

House catches up with his team, who reports that the necrosis is getting worse. Wilson thinks that if they don’t stop it from spreading, it will kill Jessica in about three hours. They need to cut it out before it penetrates the abdominal wall. Wilson and Foreman break the news to Mrs. Simms that a radical mastectomy may be Jessica’s only chance for survival because warfarin-induced necrosis attacks fatty tissue.

Cameron barges into House’s office, accusing him of insisting that she made a mistake with the heparin so that he has an excuse to fire her. He counters that maybe she actually did make a mistake. Cameron wonders if House can’t deal with his feelings for her. House says that she’s the only one who has expressed feelings and maybe she’s acting this way because she wants to be fired. Meanwhile, Vogler tells Chase that if he’s the one fired, then he’s going to need a new mole on House’s team. Chase complains that he’s been feeding Vogler information only to protect himself.

There is no change in Jessica’s necrosis. House wonders if Cameron didn’t actually screw up, but they don’t know what else it could be besides warfarin. Chase posits that maybe Jessica’s fatness is a symptom, not a cause. Could it be hypothyroidism? The parents are both big and tall, but Jessica’s short. House starts putting it all together. Stunted growth, high blood pressure, blood clots and obesity are all symptoms of Cushing’s disease. It can even explain the necrosis in rare cases.

Foreman points out that blood tests have not shown abnormal cortisol levels, but House says that is cyclical. They just haven’t caught it at the right time. With only one hour left, they weigh the options between performing the mastectomy and treating her for Cushing’s. If they’re wrong on Cushing’s, Jessica will die. House orders a quick MRI to look for what could cause hypercortisolism. Foreman and Chase study the brain scan. Chase spots a tumor on the brain, indicating Cushing’s disease.

Foreman explains the situation to Mrs. Simms. The surgery is quite dangerous because the tumor is located between the cavernous sinuses, an area that controls eye movement, and the major arteries that feed the brain. The surgeon will make an incision under Jessica’s lip and insert a fiber optic microscope. He will then go through that incision to chop the tumor into pieces for removal. After a few hours, the surgery ends in success.

A week later, a slimmer Jessica is back for her checkup. Chase, Foreman and Cameron are all happy to see her doing so well. House arrives for his meeting with Vogler and Cuddy. House nominates Chase to be the one who gets fired. Vogler rejects that and orders House to pick someone else. If he doesn’t, the whole department is gone.

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House is awesome. Dont hate

Episode 17:

ROLE MODEL
Aired 4/12/05
Senator Gary Wright speaks at a fundraiser, but stumbles through the end of his speech. Then he struggles to converse with a supporter. Wright vomits on the man’s suit before collapsing and tumbling down a flight of stairs.

Vogler gives the Senator’s case to House. He also notes that if House was a team player from the start, then he wouldn’t have to fire Cameron or Foreman. Vogler wants House to give a speech at the National Cardiology Conference next week where he is to extol the virtues of Eastbrook Pharmaceuticals’ new and more expensive ACE inhibitor. Eastbrook is owned by Vogler. House chafes at the request. Vogler says he is to make the speech and examine the Senator, or else he will have to fire one of his protégés.

House and Foreman examine Wright, but Foreman does all the work. The man has a big scar on his tongue, which Wright explains happened when he was six and fell off the swings. House doesn’t buy that explanation, p