A bunch of old people play cards, as old people are wont to do. Joining them is Keri Lynn Pratt, who I know best as BabyAunt from my 7th Heaven recapping days. This show is smart enough not to cast her young-looking and -sounding self as a teenager's aunt, but as the daughter of one of the card players, who is played by none other than Howard "Dr. Johnny Fever" or "Mr. Moore" (depending on whether you were a fan of WKRP In Cincinnati or Head Of The Class) Hesseman. While some of the ladies at the table try to fix Johnny Fever up with an available lady, his daughter seems to be having a fever of her own; her vision's blurry and ominous sound effects are playing. She excuses herself from the table, saying that she's feeling nauseated, and her dad leads her away. While we're waiting for her to barf bright green or her legs to fall off or whatever other crazy symptom this show likes to start things off with, her father suddenly freezes in mid-sentence. The Magic School Bus Cam zooms into his brain, where various neurons are misfiring. Just when I thought the pre-credits illness sequence had given up on trying to fool me, it does it again, that tricky little devil! Henry's eye bulge as his daughter's whiny voice asks what's wrong and begs him to let go of her arm. The other card players stand up and take notice, which is how you know this situation is dire: it takes a lot to distract an old person from his bridge game. Henry snaps out of it and continues his sentence, unaware that anything happened until he sees the horrified look on his daughter's face. Between her nausea and his brain problems, I think it's safe to say that they won't be winning that bridge tournament tonight.
Foreman does his neurologistly duty and tends to Henry. He explains that Henry had an absence seizure, which means that the Patient Of The Week's Requisite Seizure is already out of the way. Henry says that he's never had anything like this happen to him before, and his daughter backs him up, saying that her father is perfectly healthy except for some acid reflux problems. And now that Henry has to tell his doctor the entire truth, he makes up a terrible excuse -- about how he heard the coffee in the cafeteria was awesome and she should go try it -- to get his daughter out of the room. But what about her nausea? I guess it just came from being in a room full of Ben-Gay vapors and is no longer a concern.
Foreman informs the crew that Henry's little confession is that his right testicle is twice the size of his left one. And he never thought to have this checked out before? Was he waiting for the smaller one to catch up to achieve symmetry? House listens to this while playing with his giant tennis ball, which is twice the size of a normal tennis ball. Chase is quick to diagnose Henry with testicular cancer, but House dismisses this, figuring that Foreman already jumped to that conclusion, tested Henry for it, and came up with nothing. Let's hope those tests were done with more care and attention than the last person PPTH tested for cancer. House notices a "microabscess" in Henry's brain MRIs, which Foreman simply dismisses as a shadow because he's not a very good doctor. Brain problems plus enlarged testiscles equal STDs to House, and he orders the Cottages to treat Henry for every STD they can. Never mind the fact that Henry has already tested negative for STDs. House figures that if it's not an STD, the only other choice is lymphoma, in which case Henry will die anyway. And his insurance company will be thrilled to cover those charges for unnecessary STD drugs, I'm sure. Not to mention the fact that every time House thinks he's got the disease possibilities narrowed down, there's always one thing he hasn't thought of yet.
“ Henry admits that there's a possibility he has an STD after all. But before he can give any details, House tells Amy that Henry 'met a woman in church.' Aw, I think House might have done his patient a solid by covering for him there! ”
Out in the hall, Foreman tells House that Henry denied the possibility of having an STD; therefore, he wants to start treating Henry for lymphoma (even though they have absolutely no proof that he has that, either), hoping that they can cure him with some really aggressive treatment. House still thinks Henry has an STD, and uses Wilson to prove it, which has the bonus of causing Wilson great personal embarassment. He yells across the lobby to Wilson, interrupting his conversation with a cute young blonde, to ask how long he can go without sex. "I'm not having an affair!" Wilson responds, annoyed. Foreman informs House that people have a thing called "impulse control," which allows them to curb their urges to have sex and be completely inappropriate in the workplace. Foreman has to explain this to House because House is obviously lacking it himself. But what he lacks in tact he makes for in intuition, telling Foreman to wait until Amy goes to lunch and Henry pages Foreman back to his room so he can tell the truth about his sex life without his daughter's hearing. Sure enough, Foreman's pager goes off, and he rolls his eyes. It's exasperating when someone you don't like is right all the time, isn't it, Foreman?
House goes to Henry's room in one of those rare moments when House meets one of his patients without being forced to. Henry tells him that he doesn't want Amy to know this, but that he had sex with her mom. "She probably knows that's happened already," House says. Hee hee hee. Henry explains that his evil ex-wife cheated on him a bunch of times before he finally got fed up and divorced her, and that his daughter would think he was an idiot to go back to her after everything she did to him. As House injects a "cocktail" of STD drugs into what appears to be Henry's ass, Henry tells him how he ran into his ex at some cheese-tasting thing and they had a one-night stand. He knows it was stupid, but figures that great things can happen if you're willing to look stupid. House stares at him and wonders how many times he missed out on a great thing because he didn't want to look stupid. He'd better not be putting Stacy in the "great thing" category. Amy walks in and asks what's going on. Henry hastily pulls the back of his robe closed -- like, try knocking before you enter, Amy -- and admits that there's a possibility he has an STD after all. But before he can give any details, House tells her that Henry "met a woman in church." Aw, I think House might have done his patient a solid by covering for him there! That's one of the only nice things he's ever done for his patients, aside from saving their lives! Amy smiles and asks if this woman could be Henry's bridge partner. Henry loves the joke. In fact, he laughs so hard that his lungs fall out! House calls for a crash cart as nurses run into the room and shove Amy aside. House springs into doctor action, which I always love to see, and intubates Henry, whose lungs are all foamy. Amy interrupts the people trying to save her father's life to ask what kind of STD does this. I know you're worried and all, Amy, but you might want to save the Q&A session until AFTER your father's been stabilized. Nevertheless, House looks up to answer her that this isn't an STD. Whoops! Looks like House got the diagnosis wrong again!
“ For most of the following conversation, I thought they were actually talking about Henry's ex- wife and using 'cheese' as a cover word to keep Amy out of the loop, so you can imagine how shocked I was when House started asking Henry to describe how the cheese tasted and smelled. ”
When we come back from commercial, Chase is telling the team that once they got all of the fluid out of Henry's lungs, they found out that the problem was not there, but in an obstructed mitral valve. This symptom rules out both STDs and the lymphoma, leaving them with a mystery disease that attacks the brain, heart, and testicles, what many men would consider to be the three organs they can't live without. The Cottages don't have any good theories, but House has one, or, at very least, a good proverb: "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach."
House uses his cane to dramatically fling the Henry's privacy curtain open. He tells father and daughter that Henry's heart was causing his latest problems, and asks Henry about his cheese-tasting party. For most of the following conversation, I thought they were actually talking about Henry's ex-wife and using "cheese" as a cover word to keep Amy out of the loop, so you can imagine how shocked I was when House started asking Henry to describe how the cheese tasted and smelled. It turns out they actually are talking about cheese, specifically whether the cheese was unpasteurized sheep cheese that is chock full of bacteria. Bacteria like Brucella. Guess what? It was. So Henry's got himself some brucellosis. Henry wonders why he was the only person who got sick from the cheese that everyone ate, to which House answers that most people have enough acid in their stomachs to kill the bacteria. Henry, however, was taking antacids for his acid reflux disease, making him especially susceptible. TUMS's stock plummets.
Later, Wilson and House spend some time together playing foosball. Of course, House keeps needling Wilson about his problems with his wife, pointing out that Wilson's socks don't match today, which must mean that he got dressed in the dark as he tried to leave for work in the morning without waking up his wife and having to talk to her. Or maybe he just ran out of clean socks and was left with two sock orphans to make into a pair. Wilson changes the subject to House's patient, and House says that either he's wrong about the brucellosis and Henry keeps dying (and since there is a chance of that, you'd think House would be spending his time trying to think of what else Henry could have instead of wasting it playing foosball), or he's right, and they either caught it in time to cure him, or they didn't and Henry's heart will give out.
Cut to Henry's heart giving out. Chase defibrillates the hell out of him, zapping him, like, six times. Can you blame him, though? This is the first time in quite a few episodes that Chase has had anything to do. Might as well make the most of it.
House and Wilson continue to play foosball. House continues to ask Wilson about having an affair. Wilson continues to deny it. House tells him not to admit anything to his wife, or else Wilson will end up sleeping on House's "lumpy" couch. I'll bet it is lumpy, too; he's probably got his Vicodin stash hidden in one of the cushions.
“ Foreman tells Henry and Amy that the committee voted against giving him a new heart. Dude, seriously? Is this really how it works? Some committee of random assholes gets to pick who gets a vital organ and who dies? ”
Chase managed to get Henry's heart beating again, but there's been too much damage. Henry has a week to live unless he gets a transplant.
So House has to go before one of his many nemeses, the transplant committee. He tells them that Henry is an excellent transplant candidate, in great health except for the dying heart. "He's sixty-six years old," Cuddy the Ageist says. "He told me he was sixty-five. Liar! I'm outta here," House says in what might have been my favorite line of the episode. Great line, great delivery. The Evil Head of the Committee points out that the older the candidate, the less likely the transplant is to succeed. House says that Henry hasn't been hospitalized since he broke his leg when he was twenty-three years old, although House can't trust him on the age thing anymore. Everybody LIES when it comes to their age, House. Evil Head of the Committee doesn't want to give a heart to someone who doesn't have very much time left to live, even if he is in good health. House bristles at this, saying that, by that logic, they should be giving organs to women over men, since they live longer, and just passing black people over entirely, since their average life span is shorter than white people's. It's a good point, but probably not the right way to make it. It's good to see that House can use his over-attentiveness to race for good instead of evil sometimes, though. Evil Head of the Committee says he won't be won over by being accused of racism. "You can either be a racist or a hypocrite," says House. Evil Head of the Committee is going to go with hypocrite, saying that Henry "already had a life", and that Evil Head of the Committee would rather give organs to people who haven't gotten that chance yet. House asks the Evil Head of the Committee how old he is, at which point Cuddy wisely calls an end to the meeting. House doesn't have much hope that they'll decide in his favor.
Foreman tells Henry and Amy that the committee voted against giving him a new heart. Dude, seriously? Is this really how it works? Some committee of random assholes gets to pick who gets a vital organ and who dies? And if so, can someone tell me how the hell Larry "Drunk and Old" Hagman got a new liver? Of course, Henry and Amy are very sad. If I were Amy, I'd be out tracking down those committee members and stealing their hearts to give to my dad.
House sulks in his office. Proactive Cameron marches in with her letter of appeal, hoping that the argument that the Committee's personal dislike of House clouded their medical judgment will be a valid one. Sometimes Cameron actually has a good point to make. "They made the right call," says House. But he'll sign the letter of appeal anyway, because it's in the best interest of his patient. Then he takes off for Clinic duty, asking Cameron to get him the files on everyone who died at PPTH today. Judging by PPTH's poor standards of medical care, Cameron has a lot of work ahead of her.
“ 'I just want to assure you that we will treat her organs with care and dignity,' says the Organ Procurement Coordinator. And that's how poor Agent Weiss finds out that this wife is dead. ”
Warren is back in the Clinic. This time, he's got a broken ankle from, he claims, being kicked by the hoof of a protesting cow. Even cows have standards when it comes to their sex partners, I guess. Warren continuously refers to the cow in general terms, calling it an "it" instead of a "she," and lacking the sort of affection that one would expect from someone who's in love with the animal. (I guess; I tend to not expect anything at all from people who want to have sex with animals. House, however, has apparently studied this and therefore knows what to expect from Warren.) Not only that, but the hoof wound has a wooden splinter in it that indicates it wasn't made by a cow after all, unless it's a cow with a peg leg. Which, by the way, would be very cool. House isn't in the mood for this, apparently still believing it to be the most intricate and involved fraternity prank of all time, but Warren begs for his help: "I'm sick!" House says that if Warren's really serious about this, then he'll submit to the "painful" and "humiliating" tests House will have to run. Warren agrees to this. I really don't care about Warren's mysterious sexual problem.
Cameron goes over the latest PPTH deaths with her boss. None of them have viable hearts except for one woman who was in a bad car accident. She's still alive, but her prognosis isn't good. House is hoping that there's something wrong with her that will put her organs off the transplant list. He asks if she's fat. "She's...on the hefty side," Cameron says with adorable diplomacy. House is very pleased at this, saying that fat people's donor organs get rejected all the time. So not only are the Transplant Committee people ageist, but they're fattist as well? House figures that Henry would rather have a fat lady heart than no heart at all.
Our Woman on the Hefty Side is being tended to by the ER docs. Her husband, played by Greg Grunberg (Agent Weiss), observes the carnage from behind the all-glass walls of the trauma room. House -- who has put his white coat on for the occasion to look especially official and doctor-like -- pulls Agent Weiss aside to ask him some questions about his wife's general health. Agent Weiss says that she had a fever today, but went to work anyway because she "hasn't missed a day of teaching in years." This is much to the chagrin of her students, I'd say, who probably wouldn't mind having a substitute every once in a while. Agent Weiss is guilt-stricken at not insisting that his wife stay home, but House doesn't have the time or the desire to console him and just keeps asking if his wife had any other symptoms. At this point, a woman walks up and introduces herself as the "organ procurement coordinator for Southern New Jersey." Uh oh. "I just want to assure you that we will treat her organs with care and dignity," she says. And that's how poor Agent Weiss finds out that this wife is dead. Organ Procurement Coordinator looks horrified as she realizes that she is now living out her second worst job-related nightmare -- her first, of course, being the one where she's chased by giant human livers all the way down the shore.