Watching House

The show starts with a girl rock climbing. Her mother is spotting her. She starts to fall and her mom starts to help her back to the ground when suddenly her hand stops working. The girl falls to the ground and thinks her arm is broken and the mother has no idea what happened.

And we’re at PP with the new ducklings trying to diagnose the mother, who is getting worse. House took down all of the decorations that Kutner put up. The two talk about the mother having breast cancer but having a double mastectomy 10 months ago, but that she didn’t have reconstructive surgery. House wants her checked for cancer that wasn’t destroyed by the mastectomy.

House: MRI what’s left of her chest – set the machine to scan for irony.

House starts sucking on a lollipop with the patient and is “redoing� the patient history. The girl knows everything about her mother, including her sexual positions. House complains to Wilson and tells him that it’s child abuse.

House: There’s a reason everybody lies. It works.

A minute later…

House: Lies are like children – hard work, but worth it, because the future depends on them.
Wilson: When you care about someone…
House: You lie to them!

Wilson dismisses breast cancer in the patient and House starts talking to his team about the mother being a slut.

House: She jumps anything with a pole and a pulse.

In order to avoid any spoilers for the people in other time zones, the rest of the recap is underneath the more sign!

Foreman and Taub head to one of the Patient’s ex one night stand. They discover that the guy gave the patient some ecstacy in order to calm her down.

Back to House and he’s in the clinic with a busty blonde with strep throat. House can tell that she’s a prostitute by the pendant that she’s wearing.

Patient: Prostitutes wearing religious symbols?
House: I think they just like kneeling.

House tells Cuddy that he wants to hire 40 more fellows because they work better when they’re scared. Taub walks in and explains that they discovered about the ecstacy and that they’re started her on hemodialysis.

In the patient’s room, Kutner is with the patient who feels the same. Suddenly she goes blind.

Back from commercial, House writes stuff on scraps of paper to allow his fellows to do Secret Santa. House tells the team to go to the house and get the computers, while Taub convinces him to let them check for MS as well. There is no leakage in the mother’s eyes, meaning that there is no vascular problem.

House is in the lounge and tells Wilson that he’s trying to drive his team apart with the Secret Santa. Kutner and 13 get the computers and House starts snooping. Foreman wonders if it’s a “conversion disorder� – a psychiatric case.

House: Her mind is tricking her body…we need to trick her mind…or even better.

House and 13 head in and pull the daughter out. They want her to lie to the mother. The daughter says that she won’t lie to the mother, so 13 takes her into another room while Taub tries to use a placebo on the patient to trick the mind.

Foreman, Taub, and 13 are playing foosball and discover that House put his name in the Secret Santa stocking for all of the names. They ALL got House! Back in the patient’s room she suddenly has a problem when her throat closes up due to her lymph nodes. Apparently it wasn’t neurological.

They shrunk the lymph nodes with alcohol and they went down (never heard about that before…interesting). House has a present on his desk that’s from “Santa�. He notices on the computer that the patient stopped hiking and that she sold her stair master and he thinks she has carcoidosis. House opens the present and it’s an IPHONE!! Nice.

Turns out he had “borrowed� Wilson’s iPhone just to get them to argue.

Wilson: Have you ever considered channeling your powers to bring peace to the mideast?

Taub, Kutner and 13 are doing a treatment on the patient and she starts to bleed out of her eyes. House tells them to do a bone marrow aspiration. Kutner stays behind and tells House that he’s his Secret Santa. Kutner gives House a present and 13 and Taub walk off, upset or disgusted, I can’t tell.

House is in the clinic and the hooker is back! Her neck has a bunch of red raised bumps all over it. House asks the patient if she did a donkey show. She grins and says that she did. He explains that she got the condition from the donkey show (OH MY GOD…)

Patient: You should come see the show…I think you’d like it.
House: Sorry. I hate Westerns. (yet he’s looking at the flyer)

Chase is doing the bone marrow tap when they see that the bone inside of her is smoking – somehow her bones are harder than the drill. They ran a bone scan yet they found no “hot spots�. Foreman believes that there are no hot spots because all of her bones are turning to stone. It’s Osteopetrisis (I think I spelled that right)..but to find the cause. There’s only one cause that’s treatable, so they check for that.

House and Wilson are talking and House tells Wilson that they accused Kutner of screwing up the test. Wilson starts walking and House follows. A moment later:

House: Where are we going?
Wilson: Nowhere. I just know it hurts you.

The new ducklings are testing for the CA2 deficiency and want to test the patient’s daughter to see if she’s a match for a bone marrow transplant (just in case). The daughter wants to do it, but the mother won’t let her. Taub tells House this and gives him a present. They discover that there’s no CA2 deficiency, and 13 gives House a present as well. House heads off to tell the patient that she’s dying.

The daughter bursts into the lab and tells the crew that she wants to be tested. House talks with the patient and tells her that she should tell her daughter the truth. He says that the two aren’t mother and daughter. The patient tells House that she didn’t want children because of her genes. She knew a woman who was a drug addict and who wanted to give her daughter away. The patient says that she promised never to tell her daughter that she was adopted.

The daughter comes in and says she knows what’s going on. The mother says that the doctors could be wrong, and that she might get better.

Daughter: No mom. You’re dying. Nobody can help you. It’s not going to be okay.

House walks downstairs into the lobby of the hospital and a party is going in full swing, complete with Wilson wearing a reindeer hat! House says that he has seen something amazing – pure truth (from the daughter to the mother.

Wilson: The angels of Christmas have finally given House a present that he can appreciate.

House tells Wilson to take off the stupid hat.

Wilson: It’s Christmas – it’s a reindeer
House: It’s a moose on a jew. Things have their place. You wouldn’t hang dreidels from a Christmas tree.
Wilson: You could. Things don’t care.
(cue the *I figured it out* music)
House: No. They don’t.

He tells the ducklings to give the patient risperidone. He says that when a baby girl is developing, there is breast tissue all over her body. It then receeds and only stays in the “fun places�. But he says that sometimes it doesn’t go away. The Resperidone is supposed to make breast tissue swell. He finds a raised lump underneath her knee that is filled with (believe it or not) breast milk (due to the medication).

All that’s needed is to cut out the tumor and start the mother on chemo. And the last words of the episode are from our favorite cranky doc:

House: Have a wonderful life.

Just as he walks out, though, House sees his old ducklings mingling well with his new ducklings. He hears church bells ring outside of the hospital and goes to church where, surprise surprise, the “hooker� is playing Mary and riding on a donkey!

Things are never what they seem on House…