Not in the opening scene. Once she was in the hospital, she looked much worse due to being sick.
- I knew that she had androgen insensitivity syndrome with testicular carcinoma within 3 minutes of the episode beginning. Big aberration for House the show – usually it is something completely bizarre, like cerebral malaria because the dude went to Colombia to get illegal brain surgery. But testicular feminization should have been real close to the top of their list, even though primary amenorrhea at 15 isn’t anything to write home about, especially in skinny girls. But no pubarche by 15 (pubic hair) is abnormal. OTOH, the scan was inconsistent with AI; they saw undersized ovaries where there would be no uterus and ovaries (which would be glaring) on an MRI or abdominal CT. The retained testes are usually somewhere near the kidneys or in the inguinal canal, and should have immediately been identifiable as a mass.
If the kid (she was 15) had been seen by a real pediatrics team, especially by a pediatric endocrinologist, I have no doubt that they would have nailed this. Without doing a brain biopsy (gimme a break!)
- House is definitely on a downward spiral. I don’t really love this show in entirety because the characters are sooo implausible, but I love that the show embraces how they can throw up a main character in an eponymous show and give the guy virtually no redeeming characeristics (besides that he is smart). That takes guts. It also gives them license to take the show all kinds of places. House gets arrested for buying oxycodone! House gets busted in a prostitution sting! House gets sued for malpractice and loses badly! So far he has gotten out of sticky situations when called on it, but every week that goes by, he pushes his friends farther away. Eventually, no one will have his back, and when the long knives come out, as they inevitably will, he will be slaughtered.
Slight hijack:
I thought I’d post the link for any Dopers who haven’t found it yet: Medical Reviews of House. These are put together by a guy who is a doctor - he may a resident still, I don’t recall exactly what stage he’s in, but he’s obviously beyond med student.
He also has a drug reference guide for comics (comic books). 
I return you to your regularly scheduled discussion.
Thanks! I pored through all of them.
Well they tried that with Chi McBride. It worked… ok, I guess. Wasn’t all that great because the foil has to be so over the top (yes, even more than the characters on the show).
Well, the idea was supposed to be that it’s all in his head, and the placebo worked. No idea if that is any more plausible.
And it’s not just that Stacey left, it’s that he sent her away. Wilson claims he does it to himself to revel in the pain. Not sure about that either.
I had no issue with the placebo of morphine. House is a man of the mind, he revels in his intelligence and believes he cannot be tricked. He went to Cuddy because he never expected her to pull a placebo on him. For House, when he felt the shot he would have known what Morphine was supposed to feel like and so he would have felt it in his mind.
I personally don’t think House pushed her away because he revels in pain, I think he did it as a very out of character decision. He was able to put himself in Mark’s place and imagine the pain it would put Mark through and the guilt his dear might go through. And also I suspect there was partly fear driving him, fear that this was just a short term thing, that she wouldn’t be able to handle his acerbic nature for very long.
I dunno, we’ll see where they go with this.
At the beginning of the show, when House tried to get out of bed and was overcome with pain, I truly believed he was in horrible pain. Maybe it’s because I go thru that every morning and nobody can tell me what’s wrong with my leg, but I also think he’s in actual pain which may be intensifying. I don’t know how to explain the Morphine vs. saline injection, but (I repeat) I do believe his pain is real.
He may act ass-holish (word?) at times, but he is a very good diagnostician as well as a truly complex character, something rare on TV.
I love Wilson. He is the parental figure, with a secret smile and a great sense of humor. And Chase is growing on me, if you listen closely he has some great lines.
Cameron - feh. Omar Epps (sorry, name has escaped me) - needs to lighten up.
Cuddy - oh yeah, she rocks.
I think I disagree about the need for a foil. Or rather, I think House already has all the foils he needs. Foreman, since his promotion, is no longer the whipping boy – he knows that he can play on House’s level, and while his stuggles to be kinder tha House are not always successful, he is an effective foil to House’s recklessness and intellectual selfishness. Whereas Wilson is a foil for House’s misanthropy. Both of them get the better of House pretty regularly.
–Cliffy
Does anyone know the song that House was listening to at the end of the show, when the COB came into his office?
It’s completely unfamiliar to me but it sure rocked.
Placebos? Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.
My take on this particular instance is that if the pain is real and not psychosomatic, he should know if it was saline or morphine.
Then again, he could have real pain, exacerbated by psychological reasons…guilt, etc…
Bottom line? I dunno!
Psychosomatic pain is real, though, as far as pain “is” real. People often equate “psychosomatic” with “unreal,” but as far as your brain is concerned there’s no difference between the pain from a psychosomatic ailment and the pain from physical trauma or degeneration.
You’d think that someone who used opiates regularly would be able to tell whether or not they’d just received a shot of morphine, but it’s actually not that far-fetched that he’d be fooled. There’s a psychosomatic element at work in people who are habituated to opiates, as well. Even without any heroin entering the bloodstream, changes in brain chemistry have been observed in addicts merely going through the motions of preparing to shoot up. Endorphins flood in, banishing anxiety, and the addict experiences euphoria and a general sense of well-being. After all, everything’s all right – here comes the shot.
And House had more than his usual dose of vicodin coursing through his blood, anyway.
Thinking of psychosomatic pain as “unreal” makes as much sense as thinking of the euphoria you experience from being in love or making a huge achievement as less real than the induced euphoria from certain drugs. Your brain really is kicking out the joy juice, even if the effects are purely psychological, with no physical trigger. When your brain starts releasing different chemicals and your neurons start firing differently, that’s as real as the Rock of Gibraltar, for better or for worse.
Yeah, like my brother would get nauseous before the chemo, in anticipation of it being administered. Just as real as “real” nausea.
Whoa, Larry , I was just making a comment on a television show. I agree with most of what you say but I was expressing an opinion of a tv show within the context of that show.
Within that context I still think House would have noticed 15 to 20 mg. of normal saline when he was looking for morphine.
I mainly entered the thread to find out the name of the song at the end. My opinion of the morphine (or placebo) was just that; my opinion, given the context. The context being a tv show.
If House were tying off his arm and injecting himself every four hours my opinion might have been different. But he’s taking Vicodin, orally (usually one tablet), taking it dry and his blood level is probably not as high as one might think. There’s a lot of dramatic licence allowed on House, more than on many other medical shows and as much as I enjoy the show, I don’t get caught up in all the “hollywood”. I worked too long in that environment to put too much credence in it.
Anyhoooo, thanks for your response and I hope I explained myself.
Now, who knows the name of that damned song? 
It’s “Desire,” by Ryan Adams. I assume it’s from his most recent album but I have not checked it out that far.
Thanks, 'preciate it. I’ll check it out.
Nope, good song but not the one.
House was jammin’ to it in his office when the COB came in to give him a bad time.
Anyone else like to take a shot?
Ayup – me too. I’m sorry if it came across as overly argumentative, it really wasn’t meant that way.
It’s understandable that people might think that a doctor or an opiate user would be in a better position to recognize that their pain is (partly) psychosomatic or that they’ve been given a placebo – I just wanted to point out that it ain’t necessarily so.
If by “seeing it” you mean on a schedule, you wouldn’t because it’s 2 weeks until the next episode. I googled Nashville Fox - is your Fox Fox WZTV17? If so there’s a link to the program schedule on the network’s homepage http://www.wztv.com/home/home.shtml# check next Wednesday and see if it’s listed. (Tuesday 8pm)
BUMP!!!
Check out: http://www.fox.com/house/features/music/ – this lists the music used in each episode. From the list presented it’s either:
“Atom Bomb” - Fluke
or
“French suite #5 in g major Allemande” - Bach (played by House on the piano)
I’m guessing it’s not Bach 