No way on earth I would choose the no-leg option.
It wasn’t so much the lack of pain that was making him a nice person, it was the high from the methadone. Note that this would have a different effect on him than the Vicodin would, because the mechanism in which the methadone acts upon pain is different.
Two words: Phantom limb.
Odds are, if he had he leg cut off he’d still be in pain (and probably more pain in the beginning, as he’d have to get used to having an artificial leg).
Yes, but:
Considering that he’s nearly suicidal now, the odds are that he would be in less pain without the leg.
House’s girlfriend actually made the decision to put him in the state he’s in now. House was willing to die rather than allow the amputation.
How is he nearly suicidal? I’m not contesting; I missed most of the latest episode and all of the previous one.
Slight thread hijack for a medical-type question:
Is it illegal (or otherwise a license-revoking offense) for all doctors to prescribe themselves medication, or just for certain doctors who have abused prescription drugs in the past (e.g., House)? Further, does this apply to all medication, or just narcotics? For example, could a doctor with an infection prescribe himself antibiotics?
Just curious.
Well, given that House has always had Wilson, Cuddy, or Cameron write his scrips, he clearly cannot do so himself andexpect to get them filled.
He’s not nearly suicidal. He is, however, willing to try somewhat risky (and according to Polite Dissent, the risks were exagerrated by the episode) methods to eliminate the pain. If you read the full wiki entry on phantom limb pain, you’ll see that House is unlikely to find much relief from his pain if he has the leg amputated. (Pain meds don’t seem to help, so he’ll be in more pain than he currently is.)
And it seems unlikely that this has changed, as House himself has said, he is who is.
It depends upon the medication. Pain meds are generally prohibited from being self-prescribed due to reasons of potential abuse. Other medications may or may not have such restrictions placed upon them.
My kid and I were trying to figure out the next “treatment” we’d see on this show. I couldn’t choose between a “pink belly” or an “indian burn.” She’s going with “noogies.” We agreed that a “swirley” is unlikely.
The methadone made him stop breathing. He continued to take it. His idea of taking precautions included hiring a hooker to make sure he didn’t stop breathing in his sleep. This seems to me to indicate that pain relief is becoming more important to him than his life.
He has engaged in a lot of risky behavior in the past. Remember when he electrocuted himself to prove there wasn’t an afterlife? And he has injected himself with several different dangerous concoctions over the years.
I agree, if he had to do it all over again he’d make the same decisions.
It’s hard to argue about this because the show is so contrived. They have to keep House in pain in order to continue the show, so they never fully examine all of his options.
Hookers don’t sue for sexual harassment and are cheaper than a nurse. Both things are normal Housean solutions to the problem. As was not telling people that he was on methadone, because he didn’t want them to worry.
Yes, but those are experiments in his mind. He is doing them in the same manner which he subjects his patients to his unorthodox treatments. (Remember the episode where they did ECT on the one patient?) He has the freedom to do these things because he has no entanglements. If one of his stunts gets himself killed, he’s not going to leave behind a wife and kids or even a pet.
Well, no, I think he’d arrange things so that his ex couldn’t undercut his decision when he was in a coma.
Actually, they can. The eps after House was given the ketamine treatment, House was fine, the problem was Wilson and Cuddy, who thought that it was an opportunity to “teach House some humility.” (Which is another reason why House didn’t tell them he was on methadone, because he was worried that if they knew, they’d try and do the same thing all over again.) If House could find another treatment like ketamine, which blocked the pain, but didn’t cloud his judgement (like methadone did), then he could function perfectly well on that. He needs, however, to be able to do this through his own means, and he cannot have people “screwing” with him, because solving puzzles is how he gets his nut. He knows what the effects of Vicodin are, how to handle the level of pain associated with it, and what it does to his mental processes. Changing his meds, or level of pain, alters his thought processes and could potentially prevent him from successfully solving the puzzle. So he has to be certain that the alterations won’t screw him up.
Its like a relationship with Cuddy. He’s got to jab at her, shake her up, and see what’s she’s made of, so that if they do wind up making the beast with the double backs, she won’t freak out if he does one of his typical Housean things at some point in the relationship. How’s she going to take it if she asks him a question, and instead of responding with a comment that shows he gave the expected level of consideration to it that a SO is supposed to have, he merely tossed out one of his off-hand one-liners? She gets upset, then House has to pull his mind away from whatever puzzle he’s working on to patch things up between the two of them. If he gets Cuddy conditioned to expecting him to always giving her some kind of snarky answer, then there’s less of a chance that she’ll get overly emotional when he replies to a question in a less than satisfying way.
I’ve decided that this show is not something you can examine too closely.
If you just enjoy it for the funny moments, this was one of the best episodes ever: Wilson accusing Cuddy of sexing up House, Foreman twisting House’s nips, smiling hooker answering House’s door.
But it falls apart if you try to figure out why House decided to stop taking methadone. His whole deal is that his pain is nigh unbearable and he would do anything to be pain free. If being able to think clearly motivated House, why is he high on Vicodin all the time? Why did he quit, shave, and get an interview at the other hospital? He could have taken that job, done an okay but non-stellar performance, and be pain free. Or he could take supervised methadone and done an okay job at Princeton Plainsboro and be happy and pain free.
His cited reason that he would start to suck does not add up for me because his reasoning is so inconsistent and keeps changing all the time.
Whatever happened to Steve McQueen. He wasn’t killed when he was put in the isolation room with Foreman, was he?
Oh, I also think House is much more attractive when he’s scruffy.
StG
When the Don Johnson character on Miami Vice had an eternal stubble, Wahl (the go-to name in clippers) sold a model with a shallow rake called the Miami DeVice®, so a fella could maintain a two- or three-day stubble all the time.
It seems to me they keep messing with the basic premise in hopes of keeping the show fresh. Some things get stale, such as the POTW going into cardiac arrest every bleepin’ week.
House keeps carping about Foreman and 13 disagreeing with each other “because they’re sleeping together,” but House and Cuddy are at each other’s throats without being at each other’s crotches. I suppose the writers want us to yell at our TVs, “So boff him, awready! What are you waiting for?” I’m not yelling. Are you?
That’s because you don’t understand House. Remember, when he was all gussied up and excited about his new job, he didn’t know that it was his actions that had led to the patient getting worse. Once he found that out it was him being so agreeable that led to the problems, all thoughts of continuing with the methadone were gone. Making mistakes, House can live with, making mistakes because he did something stupid, House can’t live with.
House’s backstory is that he got expelled at one university for cheating, and wound up graduating from another one. Most, if not all, the people he works with went to much better schools than he did, and yet they consider him to be the genius. It should be the other way around.
House, like Batman, is cursed with “super competency” meaning that whatever he wants to do, he is extraordinarily good at, even better than what an expert normal human would be. This frustrates House because he doesn’t (seriously) think that he’s a genius. He sees himself as someone who is doing what anyone with a standard educational background in medicine should be able to do. Notice that when he gets angry and frustrated with his team, he’s shouting at them to think. He didn’t get pissed at Foreteen for screwing, he just wants them to think and to not be afraid to speak out for fear of hurting the others feelings.
Yes, but it’s not the physical pain he’s trying to escape from, and methadone would do a better job of addressing loneliness and sadness than vicodin would.
Unfortunately, both medications will have a spring back effect when you come off of them, making the situation seem even worse than it is. Furthermore, the longer you take them, and sacrifice relationships to maintain the addiction, the worse the situation actually becomes.
House is a genius addict. They are doing a great job of showing the relationship between an addict and his enablers.
If it was really the physical pain, he would cut the leg off; the same way a fox will chew it’s leg off to egt out of a trap.
But remember when Cuddy gave him the epidural morphine, and he was OK for a while? He asked for another shot and she refused, telling him that it was actually only saline. His pain is all in his head, and it’s either from losing {lawyer GF- is Stacy hr name?} or from some circumstance of the injury that we haven’t heard about yet.
If anybody knows the full story of his leg injury please share it, because I’m clueless. Did I miss an episode or are we all in the dark?
ok, I take it back. that does make sense now.
It was covered in the “Three Stories” episode in season 1. House developed a blood clot in his leg, which started killing the muscle, and while House knew what was going on, he couldn’t get any of the other doctors to agree to his diagnosis. House, apparently, was already a drug addict at this point. Eventually, when it was figured out that the clot was causing House’s pain, it was too late to prevent permanent damage. House decided to try a controversial treatment in order to keep his leg, which put him in huge amounts of pain. As it grew worse, the staff put pressure on House to have the leg amputated, since if his condition didn’t improve, he could die.
House’s solution was to have himself put into a medically induced coma, so he wouldn’t be in pain, while things in his leg sorted out. His ex, being a lawyer, made sure that she secured something like power of attorney, before House was put under. As soon as he went out, she and Cuddy discussed options, and the ex chose to have surgery performed on House which would cut out the dead tissue. When House woke up and found out what was going on, he was less than happy about this. Had his idea worked (and we’ve no idea if it would have or not), House would have been “normal” (well, as “normal” as House can be ;)), what his ex did means that he’s going to be in constant pain.
:eek:
Now THIS is a great theory… HOUSE… and BATMAN. O_o
No wonder I love this show!
ETA: So wait… does that mean, Wilson is Robin? And Cuddy is Catwoman? I’m going to waste so much time over thinking this…
I’d say that Wilson was more like Alfred, while the various ducklings were all “Robins.” I think, you might be able to make the case that Cameron is Batgirl, though.