Televisually-Transmitted Disease: Difference between revisions

Line 50:

** Inverted in an episode where a patient was initially diagnosed with heat stroke, and then got progressively worse. One of the doctors, who used to specialize in third world diseases, diagnosed the patient with polio - a disease which is all but unknown in the developed world. It turns out, the doctor was poisoning the patient with thallium to mimic the symptoms of polio. To make a point. Yes. Clearly the doctor was insane; upon figuring out what he's done, House fired him and Foreman called the cops. It turns out Dr. Foreman's original diagnosis of heat stroke was actually correct. The episode ends with [[An Aesop]] from Dr. House about listening to the guy in charge (Foreman), whom he put in charge because he knows what he's doing ([[An Aesop]] about listening to authority coming from an anarchist is kind of ironic, but that's beyond the scope of this page).

** Also inverted in an episode where a kid with genetic mosaicism collapses at a basketball game. Everyone considers the possibility that it has to do with him being intersexed; turns out he was just dehydrated, and the contrast dye used for the MRI made things worse due to his impaired kidneys.

** Less justified in the increasingly common episodes where House happens upon a patient with an incredibly rare, tough-to-diagnose disorder by chance rather than because they've come to him as a last resort. In one case, the patient was someone House just happened to be on the same bus with when it ~~crashed -- and~~ the patient who had the rare disorder wasn't even the person whose symptoms House had noticed before the crash and spent much of the episode trying to remember.

** Less justified in the increasingly common episodes where House happens upon a patient with an incredibly rare, tough-to-diagnose disorder by chance rather than because they've come to him as a last resort. In one case, the patient was someone House just happened to be on the same bus with when it crashed—and the patient who had the rare disorder wasn't even the person whose symptoms House had noticed before the crash and spent much of the episode trying to remember.

*** That specific example justifies itself to a certain extent. House was convinced he saw an important symptom just before the crash. So, he combed through almost everyone on the bus looking for someone presenting a mysterious symptom. He happened to find one guy in the group of dozens of people who actually did have an undiagnosed condition with a small symptom (which would have developed eventually, but was not immediately life-threatening in the meantime, especially compared to the bus crash).

** One time, actually {{spoiler|it ''was'' lupus.}} [[Fanon Discontinuity|But nobody ever seems to remember it.]]