Distractions

Before I start, I want to say hi to Miss Jenelle, which I meant to do that in last week's recap but forgot. And I'm sure she'd rather have her name associated with an episode about sweet ATV crashes and illegal drugs than Stacy being Stacy anyway.

And now, the episode: two guys ride an ATV through the hills of New Jersey. The guy driving it "woo"s excessively and pronounces the ride "way cool." He is "way lame." He's also the other rider's father, and tells the kid he can't drive the ATV because he's too young and the dad had to sign fifteen pages of forms just to let him ride on the back of it. "I don't see any lawyers around," the kid says. That's right you don't! Stacy is GONE! Hooray! Son begs Dad for a ride until Dad gives in. Even as a passenger, Dad still "woo"s. Things are going great for all of three seconds before the kid's eyes start winking oddly and his hand squeezes the accelerator. Dad warns his son to slow down, but soon goes flying off the back of the ATV. He sails through the air without letting out one "woo." He hits the ground, seemingly unhurt as he jumps up and chases after his son, who rides right off a cliff and into some giant pipes that are apparently filled with nitroglycerin, judging by how they explode upon contact with the ATV.

House is reading a medical journal that is definitely not written in English. He's using a dictionary to translate, probably after trying to use Babelfish and getting something that looks like it was written by ace reporter Fletch during his aphasia. Foreman enters and is immediately able to identify House's text as Hindi. Impressive. House says he's reading an article written by a friend, which immediately casts doubts on his story, since we all know that House doesn't have any friends. Foreman hands House the charts on the ATV kid, Adam, who's suffering from tachycardia and low potassium levels that can't be explained by his burns.

House and Foreman walk down the hallway, where they're quickly joined by Cameron and Chase, who appear behind them from out of nowhere. There are a few explanations for Adam's heart problems, but once House sees him in all his crisply-burnt glory, he notes that doing an EKG to figure them out will be impossible. Chase the Eternal Optimist doubts that Adam will even survive the burns, but House says that Adam's burns are only on 40% of his body, so while he's in for a lot of pain and some nasty scars, he will survive as long as he doesn't get infected with anything. And as long as House and company can cure whatever's ailing him now. House figures out a way to get that EKG: they can use an old-timey string galvanometer, which was how the first EKGs were obtained back at the turn of the last century. The Cottages wonder how they can get their hands on hundred-year-old medical technology. House suggests the local Radio Shack, established in 1878.

Wires are tied around Adam's limbs, which are placed in buckets full of water. Then they're ready to fire up the galvanometer, although Chase is too scared to do it and hands the plug off to Foreman. Chase gets less attractive every episode, doesn't he? Foreman manages to plug it in without incident, and the machine springs to life. It works a little bit like a lie detector, with a bunch of styluses writing various types of wave patterns down on a paper. "That's not good," says Foreman, who should probably learn not to say things like that when the patient's family is in earshot. Adam starts flopping around on the table. Adam's mom asks Cameron what's going on and gets a blank stare, followed by a good look at Cameron's back, in response as Cameron runs away.

"Who electrocuted my patient?" House asks, like he cared all that much about the health of PPTH's clientele when he was giving them migraines. Foreman explains that Adam suffered from a seizure that only looked like he was being electrocuted, which gives them another symptom of his illness. House wants to do an MRI to check for MS, but Foreman says that Adam is too sick to be moved for one. House suggests a lumbar puncture instead, and then makes a second effort to leave the room, but Chase calls him back to say that they can't do that either, since the risk of infection is too high given Adam's burns. It looks like there's nothing they can do to get a look at Adam's brain until House comes up with a third way: they can do a sonogram of Adam's head. He knows that this is possible thanks to his experiment with Coma Guy. Well, I'm glad that benefited someone. All they have to do is look for a bunch of reactive neurons in Adam's occipital cortex to know they're on the right track with the MS diagnosis. And Foreman is wearing pink scrubs. How emasculating for him.

Cuddy introduces Dr. Phillip Webber to the lecture hall. She really half-asses it, like, I know this was a bit of a surprise for you, Cuddy, but couldn't you have at least done a Google search on the guy? Or maybe rehearsed your speech once through before you went on stage? "Dr. Webber is at the Webber Center for Pain -- that makes sense -- Dr. Webber, um..." she stutters while the lecture crowd displays mild annoyance at her unpreparedness. All of them, that is, except for one guy, who appears to have stumbled in from his cardboard box house on the street what with his shabby attire and insistence on wearing sunglasses indoors. But wait a minute -- are those Gravedigger logos on his cap? Why yes, yes they are! House is our Corey Hart, and he's quickly joined by Wilson, who never has anything better to do than follow House around like a psychoanalytical puppy dog. Webber thanks Cuddy, deliberately hesitating when saying her name to make a point about her crappy introduction of him, and she rolls her eyes in House's general direction and leaves.

Wilson wants to know why House is attending a guest lecture for the first time since Wilson has known him, but House won't say. It's Webber who gives him the first clue, when he tells the crowd that he got his medical degree from Johns Hopkins, which Wilson knows is where House also went to school when he wasn't at the University of Michigan with Cuddy. Webber went on to a prestigious internship at the Mayo Clinic that House was supposed to get, which Wilson knows because he's apparently writing House's biography in his plentiful spare time. House fesses up that Webber -- a.k.a. "Von Leiberman," a name House assigned to him because it sounded "way eviler" -- was the person who told on House for cheating and got him kicked out. Whether he means that House was kicked out of med school or just the internship is not known. Whichever, House is obviously out for twenty-year-old revenge. It's a dish best served cold, apparently. Cold and moldy and biodegraded into dirt because it's been a long time since med school, but House is still pissed off. Wilson asks House if he's planning on making a fart sound when Webber bends over, which is an awesome revenge plan that I file away for future use, but House says he just wants to prove that Webber is a "bad scientist." He's so bad that he got the answer that House cheated off of wrong. So House cheated and then didn't even get it right? That sucks.

Cameron is back on exposition duty, explaining to Adam's parents that Foreman and Chase are prying Adam's eyes open to show him pictures and monitor his brain's reaction with the sonogram. If he has MS, his blood flow should be faster. If it's an infection, it will be slower. Foreman finds something that doesn't appear to be either of those things.

Back in the lecture, Webber is talking about his clinical trials. House copies his figures down on a piece of paper while Wilson needles him and refuses to give him a moment's peace. He thinks House needs to find a better hobby. He's heard good things about bowling, although he wouldn't know personally since his own hobby (stalking House) leaves him little time for much else. I'm no professional bowler, but I'm pretty sure it's not easily done with a bad leg. I suggest that House get a dollhouse, a hobby that can be relaxing and fun, especially if your dollhouse has working electricity and even a tiny Christmas tree with tiny working Christmas lights. So I hear. Foreman breaks in to tell House that they found a bleed in Adam's brain. Wilson and Foreman start discussing what this could be related to until House shushes them to listen to his stalking victim instead of doing his job and helping his patient. The noise attracts Webber's attention, and he calls the Cottages out for disrupting his very important presentation. House responds in Hindi, and (in English) sends Foreman off to fix the bleed in Adam's brain before he dies from it. He then Hindis to Webber that he can continue while Wilson just stares off into the distance in a hilarious expression that is equal parts shock, disgust, and love.

I've just realized that the only medical procedures Chase ever really seems to do are the ones that involve sticking a wire in someone and then snaking it through blood vessels to grab a clot or something like that. What's that about, do you think? Anyway, Chase is doing that for Adam now. Foreman is on sonogram probe-holding duty, which he can't even do right since he moves it around and makes it hard for Chase to see what he's doing. Chase complains loudly about this.

Webber's lecture finally seems to conclude, with Webber saying that his drug prevents migraines without the necessity of taking it every day. Now it's House's time to shine. He raises his hand and points out that Webber's calling his drug a "breakthrough" stands to net him and the pharmaceutical company he works for a great deal of money. He tries to point out the flaw in Webber's clinical-trial methodology by asking a woman with a bottle of mango juice if she has cancer and, when he gets a negative response (I loved how the woman looked all pissed off and affronted when House asked her this, like he was asking her if she had herpes or something), announces that mango juice must prevent cancer. Webber notes that House is giving him a migraine, and that his new medicine would prove useful for it, to which House laughs way to loudly and heartily while Wilson rolls his eyes. House goes in for what he thinks is the kill: Webber sucks at math, and his decision to publish in India raises a few red flags. Webber defends himself, saying that Neuroscience New Delhi is a "respected journal." House says he's heard that from "the guy running Slurp 'N Gulp," because, once again, House is racist. And not just against black people anymore, which is both refreshing and upsetting. "Get a hooker -- anything!" Wilson murmurs. Webber starts to recognize House, who keeps going on about how you can bury a faulty report in a largely unread medical journal to appease your pharmaceutical sponsors. When House calls Webber a dickface, Webber finally recognizes him. "House!" he howls, sounding exactly like a villain who's just been foiled. "Medical school was twenty years ago," he continues. "Give it a rest. Grow up." House accuses Webber of being such a grown-up that he tattled on House for cheating. Meanwhile, the rest of the lecture attendees try to figure out if this is the best or worst medical lecture they've ever seen. On one hand, they're not hearing much about breakthrough migraine medicine. On the other hand, drama is always fun to watch. House says that he tested Webber's drug on his own patient, and that it didn't work. When he hears the patient's room number, Wilson blurts, "The coma patient?," which gives Webber all the ammo he needs to discredit House's unofficial study. The medicine doesn't work on people with coma-ed-out cerebral cortexes. Duh. House actually has the grace to look shut down.

Adam is resting in a hyperbaric chamber that somehow treats his burns. Outside, Chase and Foreman wonder what could be wrong with him. Cameron comes in, ready to get some stuff done, and notices that Adam's eyelids are flickering. She worriedly tells them that he's waking up from his medically-induced coma just as Adam starts to grunt. Foreman checks the situation out through the chamber's other porthole, which looks out on a lower part of Adam's body, while Cameron says that Adam must be in pain. "That's not pain," Foreman says. Adam's grunting and eyelid-fluttering stop.

House shoots himself up with Webber's medicine, which loudly announces that it PREVENTS MIGRAINE HEADACHES on the bottle's label. He follows that up with a chaser of nitroglycerin, which carries a warning on the label. No, it's not warning of its explosive or heart-treating qualities, but that it can cause MIGRAINE HEADACHES. Then he sits back and waits for the fun to start. It doesn't, as Cameron immediately enters to inform House that Adam just had an orgasm. In the middle of asking her for clarification, House suddenly starts having what appears to be an orgasmic reaction himself, pounding on the table and exclaiming while he squeezes his eyes closed. Cameron doesn't know what to say to this, and settles on "What's wrong?" In a fish-eye lens, House says that he's having a migraine headache. Which is awesome news for him, since it means that he was right and Webber was wrong. And now karma is going to kick House's ass for giving the helpless coma patient that "little headache."

By the time we come back from commercial, Foreman is in House's darkened office, shooting him up with pain meds for his migraine. Foreman volunteers to give him something that will knock House out for a few hours, but House says that he has too much work to do for that. Not so much work to do that he didn't give himself a migraine in the middle of it, mind you. Foreman tells House to look out for any chest pain, since whatever he just shot him up with can cause "congestive heart failure," which should go nicely with the side effects of all the other drugs House has taken today. "Nothing can hurt my heart," House says, and limps into the meeting room. Chase and Cameron immediately jump up from their chairs to close the blinds and turn off the lights to accommodate their suffering boss, who forgoes sitting in a chair to lie on the floor under the glass table. He asks for a differential diagnosis on a random orgasm, and Cameron says that Adam "seemed to be okay." Foreman disagrees, saying that something is "seriously wrong with him," illustrating his point by making the universal twirling hand gesture for "crazy in the head." He then looks down at House, indicating to me that he's covering both the patient and his doctor in that assessment. The Cottages try to think of what could cause an orgasm. Cameron wonders if it's the pain medicine, which House immediately discounts with an "I wish." Be careful what you wish for, House; the last thing you probably want is to be going off in your pants every five minutes in front of your co-workers. Or maybe he would like that. Chase proposes that Adam's brain could have released a bunch of endorphins to counter all the burn pain, and that leads House to say something about the brain's being a train station that has flippable switches. Foreman elaborates on this, saying something about bundles and various other brain things that might have been attacked by something mysterious, causing bad to feel good and good to feel bad. Unfortunately, all the things that could cause this to happen are very, very bad for you, and there's no way they can find out what they are in Adam's current condition.

Cameron has yet another theory: maybe Adam just has a simple infection and his brain -- already loaded with all the medications Adam is on, like a waiter with too many dishes -- freaked out and dropped everything. House lectures her on trying to use metaphors when he is the king of them -- even though I think hers, about the waiter, was much better than his about the train station, and he's probably just jealous -- and then goes back to lying on the floor and wanting to die. Foreman says that they may not have time to sit around and wait for Adam's wounds to heal before they're able to test him for a simple infection, and House says that they can try to expedite the process -- with bugs!

Adam gets a tray full of maggots dumped on his chest in a scene right out of Fear Factor. Sitting in for Joe Rogan today is Cameron, who explains to Adam's very displeased parents that maggots eat dead flesh, so they'll be able to get rid of Adam's dead tissue and the bacteria in it. And now it's time for them to drink a milkshake made out of dead wasps and horse testicles.

House continues to suffer in his office. He notices his coffee mug nestled in between his migraine's trademark light spots, and gets up to avail himself of its contents. But before he can get there, a very pissy Wilson enters and takes it away from him, saying that House would be better off with water. People on the forums disagreed with this, saying that the caffeine in coffee actually helps migraines, but since caffeine tends to do exactly the opposite for me and my migraines, I thought Wilson was right here. I guess it all depends on how your own personal body works. ["I'm in the caffeine camp; nothing works as well on my headaches as American Excedrin capsules (with caffeine), including prescription Imitrex, which made me sicker the one time I took it than any migraine in my life ever has." -- Wing Chun] I don't think Wilson was being malicious by withholding the coffee from House here, although his insistence on speaking loudly and rattling the silverware around while getting that glass of water definitely was. He accuses House of going through all of this just to be in pain, since the results of this experiment were either the mental anguish of knowing that Webber's drug worked or the physical pain he's in now, which is totally useless anyway since it's not like Webber's pharmaceutical company is going to dump him because one guy said his drug didn't work, especially since the guy gave himself an artificial migraine and not a natural one. The only reason House did this, Wilson says, was to distract himself from thinking about how he dumped Stacy. Oh, shut up, Wilson. The more airtime this guy gets, the less I like him.

The Cottages find House sleeping on the floor of his office. Cameron kindly offers him a pillow and only gets criticized for having a "grating" vocal frequency in return. The maggots helped Adam's burns but didn't do anything for his brain, meaning that Cameron's skin-infection theory was wrong. House says that they need to do the lumbar puncture now, and that they can get it by going into the part of Adam's spine that isn't covered with burnt skin -- in between the C2 and C3 vertebrae, which makes this more of a cervical puncture than a lumbar one. Foreman doesn't want to have any part of this, saying that the only time he's ever seen that procedure done resulted in the patient's becoming paralyzed. House says it's either a paralyzed patient or a dead one at this point.

Foreman gets to inform the parents. He tells them that there is a significant risk of paralysis in this procedure that has to be done, and Mom finally speaks up and yells at Foreman for telling her all of this upsetting stuff just to cover his own ass. She'd rather not know it if there's nothing they can do to prevent it. Dad tells her to ease off, and she accuses him of being the reason why Adam is sick in the first place, since that's what he's been saying all along anyway.

Family drama over, Foreman gets ready to do the puncture with Chase assisting. He doesn't have any success with his first attempt and tries again. Chase doesn't think that's wise, and says so loudly and insistently while poor Foreman is trying to concentrate. Adam's blood pressure skyrockets, but Foreman manages to get the tap in and collect the precious, precious fluid.

Foreman comes back to tell House that Adam doesn't have anything they thought he did. They're out of tests for Adam, they've gotten all the medical history from his parents that they can, and they still don't know what's wrong with him. House wants to go right to the source -- Adam. He makes his way into Adam's room with the anesthesiologist and orders him to wake Adam up so he can talk to him. The anesthesiologist really doesn't want to, saying that Adam will be in extreme pain and that this is torture. House orders him to anyway. Adam's first words upon awakening are a gasped "oh my god!" Yeah, burns hurt. I caught a tiny part of my knuckle on a toaster coil the other day and it hurt like anything. House ignores Adam's moans and tells him to answer House's question as quickly as possible before the pain gets even worse than it is now. He needs to know if Adam felt any tingling in his limbs before he crashed the ATV. Adam notices that his chest has been burned off and is upset (they couldn't have at least put some dressings on the guy before waking him up? Cruel!), but manages to keep his head clear enough to tell House that the last thing he remembers before crashing was peeing in his pants. Then he starts screaming in agony, and House lets the anesthesiologist put him back under. House has the grace to look ashamed of himself for what he just did. Or maybe he's just pissed that Adam was so inconsiderate of his migraine and screamed so loudly. He finds Cameron waiting for him outside the room and tells her to round everyone up in his office while he gets some aspirin.

Cue the trippy music! House takes a shower and looks pretty out of it. He wraps himself in a towel and sits on a nearby bench, where he watches the drops of water fall to the ground and shimmer in unworldly ways. The Magic School Bus Cam got to have fun this week, it seems. Cameron wanders in -- all too happy to get to look for House in the men's locker room -- and asks him what's keeping him from their meeting. "I'm hallucinating," he responds. Cameron thinks this is an effect of House's migraine, and is concerned until House shushes her so that he can keep seeing the music, and she figures out that he took something to create these hallucinations. And just where the hell did he get that LSD? Same place the Cottages found that galvanometer, I guess: the Plot Assistance Closet. It's a very handy thing to have around when you want something to happen but don't want to take the time to show how it happened. Cameron yells at him in hallucination-vision, in which she is even more annoying than usual, and then leaves disgustedly. House continues to enjoy himself.

Cameron tattles on House to Foreman and Chase, pissed off that their boss would dare to ingest an illicit substance while his patient is dying mysteriously. I think she's just mad that House didn't take something that would make him horny enough to do a co-worker. House ambles in looking remarkably hallucination- and pain-free. "I took something," he explains, and then says he has figured out what is wrong with Adam: he's depressed. The peeing in the pants and blackout are common precursors to a seizure. Antidepressants can cause seizures. They can also, in extremely rare cases, cause a brain to over-produce serotonin and "fry itself" -- a serotonin storm. As usual, the treatment for this could kill Adam if they're wrong, so they'll need to make sure they're right. House wants to accomplish this by waking Adam up again and asking him about his Paxil use. Adam's parents, however, are not so pleased with this plan, since that anesthesiologist told on House for waking Adam up the first time. This means that the anesthesiologist can look forward to having his life ruined by a vengeful House in about twenty years or so. Unless, of course, House just gives himself a migraine instead.

House asks Adam's parents if their son is depressed. They're less than happy to meet their son's physician after having heard the screams he induced in Adam all the way down the hall. But House says he did it to find out what caused the ATV crash -- a seizure. "This wasn't my fault?" is Dad's first response. Selfish! House tells him to figure out personal responsibility issues later; he needs to wake Adam up now. The parents insist that Adam isn't taking antidepressants. "He's the happiest kid I know!" Dad says. I'll bet he is, with all that parent-supplied weed. "But you don't know, do you?" House counters. Well, unless Adam bought his own personal health insurance, I'd say they probably do know, unless there's an OTC antidepressants that I'm unaware of that isn't chocolate-based. Mom says that their son tells them everything, including when he cheated on a math test, got drunk at a party, and even when he lost his virginity. House is proud of Adam's young virginity-loss on Adam's behalf, but still isn't buying the fact that Adam doesn't have any secrets from his parents. Adam really needs to learn that there are some things that it's okay for your parents not to know about, like the virginity thing. You can keep certain aspects of your life personal, dude. Mr. and Mrs. Adam are so sure that Adam isn't depressed that they will bet his life on it. They won't let House wake Adam up to ask him.

So House and the Cottages are back where they started from: a bunch of symptoms with no apparent cause. House leaves the room to "take a leak," which the Cottages should know by now means he's up to no good. Adam's parents find House scrubbing up to enter Adam's sterile room, and run to get Foreman, who enters the room without putting on all his sterile clothes to stop House from waking Adam up. "No pain, no gain!" House sing-songs as he prepares to inject Adam with wake-up juice. Foreman grabs House's arm as House grabs Adam's, and that's when House notices a small, circular burn mark on Adam's wrist. Foreman doesn't think it's very significant, but House does.

Out in the hall, House asks the parents if Adam smokes. "I'd kill him!" says the guy who's perfectly cool with letting his son smoke weed, cheat on math tests, get drunk at parties, have sex, and drive ATVs. House is pleased to report that Adam was, in fact, keeping one secret from his parents; he's a smoker. He has a cigarette burn on his wrist and a nicotine stain between two fingers. I can understand where that nicotine stain came from, but how do you burn yourself on the wrist like that by accident? Maybe he did it while stumbling around in the darkness of the Plot Assistance Closet. House explains that Adam was buying cheap stop-smoking medicines, which are apparently full of antidepressants, over the internet. House catches himself before he can snark on the suffering parents too much, and even apologizes to them for thinking their son was depressed. He doesn't apologize for anything else, though.

"Did you drop acid?" Cuddy asks as she marches into House's office. House asks her why he would do that. Cuddy has three possible reasons: "To annoy me, or maybe because you're miserable, or because you want to self-destruct?" Why do people feel the need to inform House and the viewing audience that House is so unhappy? And isn't that Wilson's entire purpose on this show? Don't take that away from him, Cuddy. House has a fourth reason: LSD does something to serotonin receptors that makes migraines go away. Cuddy reveals that it was Cameron who tattled on House in the first place, which means that Cameron will go on House's Twenty-Year Revenge Countdown chart just under the anesthesiologist, but Cuddy told her that LSD lasts twelve hours, so there's no way House could have taken it and then been fine so shortly afterward. Unless, House points out, he took enough antidepressants to "short-circuit" the LSD. Cuddy doesn't even know what to say to that. How about "you're fired"?