Top 10 Wackiest Cases & Diagnoses on House
#10: Breast Cancer in a Knee
"It's a Wonderful Lie"
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In this Christmas episode from season four, a mother suddenly loses the use of her hands and finds herself in Dr. House’s care. Because of a history of breast cancer in her family, the patient has already had a preventative mastectomy. The team scans her chest for cancer anyway, but finds no evidence of it. Her condition quickly deteriorates, as she loses her sight and her bones begin to harden. After ruling out other options, the team assumes that her disease is fatal, until House has an epiphany. It is breast cancer. The tumor just isn’t where they expected it to be. Thanks to House’s insight, this mother and daughter will have many more Christmases together.
#9: Pulmonary Embolism Caused by Dental Work
“House’s Head”
In this dramatic two-part episode, House has to rely on his subconscious instinct rather than his rational mind. After suffering a concussion during a bus accident, his memory is severely impaired, but he’s convinced he noticed a symptom in one of the passengers before the crash. At serious risk to his injured brain, he goes to extreme measures to remember what he saw, including undergoing hypnosis and intentionally inducing hallucinations. Eventually he determines that it’s the bus driver who’s sick, but with what? When House notices that the man had recent dental work, he deduces that an air bubble was injected into his bloodstream through his gums and traveled to his heart. He solves the riddle just in time to save the man’s life.
#8: Metal Pins in a Patient’s Brain
"Birthmarks"
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Unbeknownst to her, Nicole’s condition has been affecting her throughout her entire life. She was adopted from China as a baby, and as an adult she returns to find her birth parents. She collapses suddenly in a temple while lifting a statue of Buddha. Back in Jersey, House has to perform the differential remotely after Wilson kidnaps him to force him to attend his father’s funeral. The team rules out SARS, cancer, and gallstones before running out of ideas, and Nicole slips into a coma. Then Wilson figures out the missing piece of the puzzle. Nicole’s biological parents pushed pins into her brain when she was an infant. They’ve been ruining her life ever since, even causing her alcohol use disorder.
#7: Erdheim-Chester Disease
“All In”
If House can solve a case and get one over on Cuddy at the same time, that’s a win-win in his book. During a charity poker night at the hospital, a little boy comes into the E.R. with gastrointestinal symptoms and lack of coordination. House has a hunch that this patient is just like another one from twelve years earlier whom he failed to diagnose in time. He’s been obsessed with the case ever since, believing it was an incredibly rare disease known as Erdheim-Chester. Cuddy, Wilson, and Chase worry that his obsession is affecting his judgment. But as usual, it turns out that House was right all along.
#6: Gold Poisoning
“Clueless”
When something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Bob and his wife appear to have the perfect marriage, but the wife is hiding a secret. When Bob is admitted to the hospital with difficulty breathing, House suspects heavy metal toxicity. However, all the usual tests rule it out. Despite the wife’s apparent devotion, House becomes convinced that she’s been poisoning her husband. Eventually he figures out that she’s been mixing an arthritis medication that contains gold into Bob’s food, slowly killing him. In the dramatic conclusion, House proves the wife’s guilt using a chemical that turns gold purple, revealing the evidence all over her fingers. Just as House suspected, their happy marriage was a sham.
#5: Chimerism
"Cane and Able"
What’s the differential diagnosis for alien abduction? Clancy has visions of extraterrestrials invading his room and experimenting on him. When tests show he has two different people’s DNA in his body, and Chase finds a piece of metal in his neck, the team starts to take his beliefs a little more seriously. Of course, this is “House,” not “The X-Files.” There’s a perfectly rational, if incredibly weird, explanation. The metal is a piece of a pin used to repair his broken arm years earlier. As for the strange DNA, while still in the womb, Clancy absorbed his fraternal twin and some of the foreign cells are still in his body. All the team has to do is cut them out, and Clancy is cured.
#4: Propylene Glycol Toxicity & Alien Hand Syndrome
“Both Sides Now”
Scott’s right brain knows something his left brain doesn’t. After surgery to correct a seizure disorder, he can no longer control his left hand. It’s constantly misbehaving, causing trouble for Scott and his girlfriend. His liver is also failing, and he has a bleeding disorder. While House is distracted by issues with Cuddy, Scott’s girlfriend is the one to figure out the answer. She realizes that when Scott’s left hand threw a can of deodorant across the room, it was trying to tell them something. It turns out Scott has been poisoning himself by overusing the heavy duty stuff, and it may have even caused his seizures. Maybe now the two halves of Scott’s brain will be able to live together in harmony.
#3: Rabies
"Histories"
Victoria is homeless, and her combination of symptoms is so weird, Foreman is convinced she’s faking it just to get a bed and a meal. She reveals that she intentionally overdosed on insulin to cause a seizure, but that doesn’t explain her paranoia, light sensitivity, or spiking fever. When Foreman offers her water, she accuses him of trying to poison her, and she’s terrified of the ice bath used to lower her body temperature. When House discovers that she also has numbness in her thigh, the answer becomes clear. It’s an especially scary diagnosis, since Victoria bit Foreman earlier in the episode. Thanks to vaccines and other medical advances, rabies has become extremely rare in the developed world, but without immediate treatment, it’s 100% fatal.
#2: Anthrax & Leprosy
"Cursed"
We don’t blame Gabe for thinking he has bad luck. He managed to catch two rare conditions at the same time. The team first diagnoses him with anthrax, which he caught while hanging out in an abandoned building. But despite the treatment, he keeps getting worse. After House gets Gabe’s father to admit that he spent time in India and has been lying about it, the team realizes that Gabe also has leprosy. The crazy thing is that this isn’t the only time House sees someone with leprosy. In season five, he treats a woman with an unusual form of the disease that makes her look younger. The odds of both of these cases ending up with House must be a million to one.
#1: Eperythrozoon Infection & Giovannini Mirror Syndrome
“Mirror Mirror”
The condition depicted in this episode is a dramatized version of a real syndrome that’s only been documented once. House’s patient has amnesia so severe that it’s wiped out his personality. To compensate, he imitates whoever is in the room with him. Wilson thinks he mirrors the person he perceives to be dominant, and of course, the crew uses this to test their relationships to each other. However, the mirror syndrome is only a symptom, and the patient will die if the team can’t find the cause. Using some clever tricks, House discovers he’s a farm equipment salesman who caught an infection from pig dung. This type of bizarre case inspired by real life events is part of what made “House” such an engrossing show.
Which wacky diagnosis did you think was the most unbelievable? Let us know in the comments below.
