House suspected heavy medal poisoning. Her mom had arthritis and wife was taking the arthritis meds, which had a gold compound in them, and feeding the gold+ to hubby. House catches her by holding another solution that reacts with gold against her unwashed hands, which turned purple. He had told Cameron not to let wife go to the bathroom, so she wouldn’t wash her hands. “There’s a problem with the water throughout the hospital; none of the bathrooms are working.”
Yeah, I obsessed about that the whole episode!
I kind of caught on to that pretty quick so it wasn’t too disturbing. If you were really being attacked, you would run like hell, not take a moment to check on your attacker.
It’s almost to the point where 6 Feet Under had gotten to, where they run it around so much you can’t possibly guess what’s going to happen to the person in the beginning, or even that it’s that person it’s going to happen to.
by the way, the thread is labeled open spoilers…
Why did Cameron give House the money at the end of the episode? Did he bet her it was heavy metal poisoning? I must have missed that part.
And did that guy with Herpes really cheat on his wife or not?
IIRC, the bet was whether a good, happy, long-term relationship could exist.
As for the guy with herpes, yes, he cheated. The fact that he latched on to a lame excuse indicated to House that he was lying – he was looking for an out.
Though, as my wife pointed out, maybe it’s the wife that cheated and he’s in denial and looking for anything to prove it wasn’t so. The wife’s actions indicated the case in the show was otherwise, but House could have been wrong.
What all you guys said and “great episode.”
I almost forgot to mention that I loved the image of House shotgunning the energy drink. I just hope he doesn’t have to do that before going into surgery or something 
Fortunately, House rarely performs any actual medical procedures himself. That’s why he’s got Chase.
I enjoyed the exchange between House and Wilson’s maid about the box.
Maid: What kind of box?
House: A wooden box!
Maid: You mean the chest?. The one that’s under the bed?
Yeah, that’s true.
The maid is an interesting dynamic. His solitary home is suddenly going to be drastically different. He’s living with his best (only?) friend and the den of mess and chaos is suddenly clean. I suspect we’ll see more clips of his home life now that there will be people to interact with.
I’m glad to see Wilson is on his feet. I loved the interaction over blowing his hair dry. “You blow your hair?” “Yes, some people care about how they look.” YOU… Blow Dry… Your HAIR?!" hehe
So did the wife continue to poison her husband when he was in the clinic? I didn’t see him eat anything. Would he have been eating with a trach tube in his throat?
<ENT knowledge on>
You can eat with a trach tube just fine once your throat heals in general. As long as you have no other swallowing disorders, you just have to occlude (block) the tube.
</ENT knowledge off>
My only medical disbelief-suspension was having them do a trach while the patient was still seizing. That’s a very precise procedure, doing it on a moving patient would be next to impossible.
However, I was impressed with the fact that they remembered to have the patient block the tube to talk.
They didn’t say,
but I figured it was Munchasen’s by Proxy.
I’m a bit surprised & puzzled that you can poison anyone with gold; and that there’s an arthritis remedy that includes gold. I thought gold was inert – it doesn’t form compounds with any other element.
Good episode. One thing, though. Did anyone else think the wife looked quite a bit older than the husband? That wouldn’t have been extraordinary, of course, except they made a point of them having been in 9th grade together.
Gold is relatively safe to ingest – otherwise the FDA and similar bodies wouldn’t allow the sale of Goldschlager schnapps.
She was poisoning him with chronic exposure to a compound containing gold chloride – tetrachloroauric acid, which is extremely corrosive and nasty. Something else again.
I dunno, *Law and Order * as well as *Law and Order: Criminal Intent * are both very formulaic, but I never seem to get tired of them …
And Perry Mason ran for years.
Formula is fine, as long as it’s kept interesting. It’s not the plot, but the character interactions and the dialog that makes House work.
But not for longer than 60 minutes, minus commercial time!
I thought the scene with Cameron telling the wife she couldn’t go to the bathroom because of the water problem was hilarious! You see, when my daughter was in the hospital last year that actually happened! Two separate nights, about two weeks apart, they came over the PA system and put up signs on all the bathrooms that they would be out of order until such and such a time. And it was like 6 or 8 hours! They had one bathroom in the lobby of the hospital that was working, but other than that, no water.
I never did understand what was going on, especially since it happened twice.