Episode Report Card Lauren S: B | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Decisions, Decisions
By Lauren S | Season 5 | Episode 23 | Aired on 05.14.2009
Swender isn't going to give in to Derek without a fight, and she brings Cristina in to show her Allison's scans. She had mets on her brain, liver and kidney that responded to five surgeries, followed by chemo, but then the mets came back. After that they used IL2, and after three treatments in three months, Cristina is stunned to look and see that all of them are gone. Swender thinks Izzie should be patient and give the IL2 a chance, and pointedly says that sometimes there's a better way to do things than just cutting. She seems to have done a good job, as Cristina seems awed.
Bailey, meanwhile, is doing surgery with Leo -- the Da Vinci machine, that is. She's still giggly and excited as she shows off some moves to the Chief, and then she starts making some whooshing noises as she works. The Chief asks dryly if she's making lightsaber noises and she controls herself, telling him, "Not anymore, sir." He then challenges her by telling her about another hospital that removed a gallbladder through a single bellybutton incision and asks if she wants to do that next. She's beside herself, and can't help but resume the lightsaber noises.
Cristina is now playing the role of Swender and showing the scan to Meredith, who seems skeptical and points out that Izzie might not have three months for the IL2 to work. She's also stunned, since Cristina is never against cutting, but Cristina defends that she is against it if it's not in the patient's best interest. I don't entirely buy it, but fine. Mere asks if she thinks Derek isn't acting in Izzie's best interest when, speak of the devil, he pops his head in the door. He looks kind of suspicious, which has to be at least in part by how flat-out guilty Meredith looks when she whips around. He tells them that they are ready in radiology and then between his last suspicious glance and Cristina and Meredith's pointed glares at each other, there's a lot of eye-acting going on here.
Izzie's on a table with little silver nodes on her head, and Meredith and Derek are all decked out in their finest lead smocks. Mere explains what they will be doing, which Izzie knows -- Mere will show her some flashcards, then Derek puts half of her brain to sleep, and then she tries to tell Mere what she saw. Knowing absolutely nothing medically about this test except what I've just heard on TV, I have to agree with Derek that it might not be the most accurate representation of what could happen because... a full half of her brain? That's way more than just the portion Derek wants to remove, and I feel like that would have a lot of effect on things. But hey, I'm not a doctor, I just snark about them on TV. Izzie starts to show off and get too detailed in her descriptions of the images, which are of a dog, plane, and house. She chants that to herself as Derek does the brain sleep thing, but almost immediately her speech drops off. Mere tries to ask her what she saw, but Izzie can't even form words, much less remember. As it turns out, Izzie doesn't seem to remember Meredith or Derek either, and when Mere tells her to nod if she knows who Alex is, she just stares up with terrified, wide eyes.