Watching House

Season 3, aired Tues. March 6th, 9 p.m. - Half Wit co-staring Dave Matthews

This episode opens with a father and son dressed in formal wear preparing for a concert back stage. The father helps the son, Patrick, played by Dave Matthews, do up his buttons when he has difficulty. Once the buttons are done up and the son is dressed the father asks the son if he’s ready. The pair stand and walk out onto a stage where they are given a standing ovation.

The father introduces his son and thanks the audience for attending the concert. The concert is being held to benefit others with neurological and brain injury disorders. Apparently when Patrick was just 10 years old he was in an accident that left him boy like but with an amazing musical talent.

The father leads the son to the piano which is center stage and Patrick begins to play some lovely music on the piano for the audience. As the father watches from the side of the stage he notices that Patrick missed a couple of notes. He’s startled because Patrick apparently never misses any notes. The father can see that something must be wrong so he rushes onto the stage and asks Patrick what’s wrong. That’s when Patrick says his hand hurts and when his father asks to see his hand we see that his left hands fingers have all cramped up as if they are in spasm.

In the next scene we shift over to the hospital where we see Cameron walk in to House’s office. There’s a large paper bag on the table and a folder. A post it note on the bag says “Good Morning, Read Now. XO Yo Yo Mama”. Cameron places the note to the side and begins to look at the chart. Foreman walks in and asks “what’s the emergency” to which Cameron replies as she continues to read the chart “35 year old savant, dystonia in his left hand”, Foreman is upset that House paged them to come in a 5 a.m. for this case.

Cameron continues reading and says that he’s on clonazepam for seizures from a bus accident that he had when he was ten. Foreman turns around and mumbles another type of treatment for the seizures. Chase enters the doorway at that point and asks what’s up. When he hears, he says he’s going back to bed, but runs into House. Chase tries to pretend he was going to go to the washroom and says that he can wait and goes to sit at the table.

Foreman tells house that he doesn’t think there’s a case. House is surprise and wonders why they aren’t wondering why a ten year old boy who gets into an accident on his way to school can suddenly play the piano. Chase mumbles - something about House expecting them to solve a 25 year old case. While they are talking House uses his cane to pull the large paper bag over to himself just as Chase is reaching for it. It turns out the bag is full of Bagels. (Now this show is hitting on a touch of reality! Almost every nurses station or doctors area in my hospital seems to have a bag of bagels each morning.)

House decides that the team should run new labs. He wants a cbc with platelets, chem panel, thyroid and adrenal function tests.

In the next scene Foreman is examining Patrick. Having the patient extend his arm in front of himself and stick out his tongue. The father explains that Patrick knows he should respond when he’s spoken to but often automatically responds by repeating whatever he’s been asked. Foreman doesn’t mind this and says “that shows he’s engaged”.

Next we find House on clinic duty. He’s busy with his back to a female patient who’s complaining that traffic was so bad that morning she had to get out of her car and walk. As House approaches the patient he gets her to tie a rubber tourniquet around his arm and he pulls up his sleeve and sticks a tiny baby butterfly needle into his left elbow and draws some of his own blood. The patient wonders what this has to do with her complaint and House replies back “nothing” you’ve got a blister, your wasting a doctors time. He also tells her that her real problem is her breath and decides that she has bulimia and accuses her of keeping herself thin by puking. The patient protests his diagnosis but doesn’t fully deny what he’s said.

House is interrupted by Foreman. House and Foreman talk as they walk to the nurse desk where House gives the blood sample to a nurse asking for cholesterol and glucose levels. (should have taken two tubes House! those test require two different types of tubes). Foreman tells him that the patient is good to go … as House grabs a piano and wheels it into the room.

The father is startled because he thought his son was being discharged.

House begins to play “I don’t like Mondays” by the Boomtown Rats on the piano. I must say he did a remarkable job! What fun it must have been for Hugh Laurie, a musician himself, to have worked with Dave Matthews. I can picture them having fun figuring out the various music scenes together.

When House finishes the intro to the song he asks Patrick to copy him. Patrick plays the song just as he heard it. Then he tells Patrick to close his eyes as he plays a few notes and asks Patrick what it is. Patrick states the notes that were played. The father asked if any of this had anything to do with his hand … House said it might.

House then plays one final song and has Patrick accompany him as he’s playing. Patrick plays longer than House did and we find out later that Patrick had actually figured out some notes to the song that House had been trying to work on himself.

When Patrick stops playing, House tells Foreman to call MRI because they need to perform a functional MRI of his brain. He wants to see the music.

In the next scene House and Foreman are performing the MRI. It doesn’t seem to be showing much until House turns off the music that had been playing and asks Patrick to pretend that his legs are a Piano and to use his hands on his legs as if he were playing the piano. Almost immediately Foreman and House see areas of Patricks brain light up. House notices that his heart rate went up as well and wonders if Patrick has a problem with his heart that’s affecting the limbic system.

He tells Foreman to get an echo of Patricks heart.

After the test Foreman tells Cameron that Patrick does have a problem with his heart and it affected the circulation to his arm. So he didn’t have dystonia - it was a heart related circulation problem.

While Cameron is with Foreman she asks him if he knows of any reason why House might go to Boston. She found plane tickets. She opened his mail. She knows that there is a position at Harvard for division chief Infectious disease. Foreman isn’t sure but then he remembers that House was testing blood in the clinic and doesn’t think it was the patients blood.

This is where the show really picks up and becomes intriguing …

Suddenly snoopy staff members - Cameron checks Houses mail, Cameron and Chase break into Houses apartment to find out what House is hiding - they discover that he’s made recent calls to Massachusetts General … at the same time Cuddy starts to question why House has been calling Massachusetts General. Is he applying for a new job? or is he sick?

Foreman does an angiogram on Patrick and Patricks’ heart goes into ventricular tachycardia, they have to use the paddles on him to shock his heart.

Cuddy goes and talks to Wilson and asks if he knows what Dr. copper smith in Bostons specialty is and finds out it’s oncology - specifically brain cancer. She just turns and looks at Wilson with a pained look on her face … and we the TV audience also sit stunned … oh oh.

House and the team discuss Patricks results and they decide that he might have two problems. One with his brain and one with his heart. House wants to find the source of the possible bleeding in his brain and decides that the team should scope Patrick - both ends. Patricks test doesn’t go well when he’s told that it’s going to hurt.

Cameron runs into Wilson outside the hospital and asks if he knew if House had applied for a new job and stated that she had a right to know because she could end up having to look for a new job. Wilson ended up telling her about House’s illness.

Wilson finds House playing the piano in Patricks’ empty room (remember Patrick was having the colonoscopy and gastroscopy).

The best line in possibly the whole episode comes up near the beginning of House and Wilsons converstation when House is still talking about his patient Patrick and stating that the “dummy” figured out a part that he’d been working on since high school. It was music that House had written himself in high school.

That’s when Wilson smiles and says “I can set up a tower on the roof during a lightening storm and help you switch brains with your patient. That way you could be the brilliant pianist and he would be the doctor hiding Brain cancer.”

Turns out House has brain cancer and the specialist from Boston has given him 6 months to live. Unfortunately the specialist is in Africa right now. House isn’t concerned as he plans to go to Massachusetts General for the prescribed treatment and doesn’t need the specialist Stein to watch over his treatment.

Wilson can’t understand why House didn’t come to him.

House learns that the whole team knows of his illness since Wilson ended up telling Cameron and Cameron told Chase and Foreman.

House doesn’t want to talk about his illness with the team. He wants to figure out what’s wrong with his Musical Savant patient instead.

House wonders why a patient on anti-seizure meds is still having seizures. Cameron comes up with a new question - Not why is he having seizures- it’s why are they getting worse.

House decides to take him off the anti-seizure meds. They’ll wait until his seizures get worse so that they can do a pet scan in order to figure out which part of the patients brain is affected.

Cameron walks into Houses office and asks him to sign a letter of recommendation for Penn. She’s obviously beginning to search for a new job.

House gives Cameron a hard time saying that the doctor at Penn won’t like her with her new casual attitude. She just stares at him, then her face changes as he asks her if she really wants to leave. He says he’s not dead yet.

He stands up and Cameron slowly approaches him with an intense look on her face. Are they going to kiss? She reaches up with her hands and touches his face and slowly pulls his face to her own as they share a passionate kiss.

Her hand reaches into her pocket as they kiss but House notices and discovers that she’s reaching for a needle and tube holder in order to take his blood. They make it seem like she was just going to stab him to get his blood but the two pieces of equipment she had in her hand don’t quite work that way. Oh medical show foul ups!

House comes clean and tells Cameron that his blood and other samples are in the lab under patient “Luke and Laura” and she heads out the door to check his results and possibly run more tests. House calls to her that if she needs a sperm sample she’ll have to come back without the needle.

In the next scene we see foreman and Cameron looking at House’s Cat scan and discover a 6 cm mass extending into his dorsal mid-brain extending into his temporal lobe. It’s inoperable. Cameron asks Foreman how much time House has and he says “House’s got a year”.

In the next scene we see the savant in bed having a seizure. His father calls for a nurse.

Apparently the team found out that the treatment that House says he’s going to have is only to treat depression on terminal cancer patients. It’s not a cure or even a treatment for cancer itself.

House walks in on his team as Foreman is calling a doctor to find out about another type of cancer trial. House hangs up the phone after saying “Bye Pete” into it. They tell him about yet another trial that’s going on at Duke.

House tells the team to stop trying to figure out his illness. He shows them the patients PET scan. There are non specific hot spots in the brain that show that the left brain is working harder than the right. What could this be? Bleeding in the brain? Patrick needs an angiogram to check the vasculature of the brain.

House leaves irritated … and talks with the patient himself as he sets up to do the angiogram on the patient.

He asks the patient if he likes his life and performing in front of people. The patient replies that he likes the piano … not girls.

The MRA confirms small collections of blood throughout the white matter of Patricks hemisphere. Trauma, aneurysm, cancer or autoimmune disease could cause these symptoms - House decides that they need a biopsy to figure out what it is. He’s bleeding into his brain, he’s dying. Since they don’t know where the problem is they will have to take random samples until they find the problem.

Foreman suggests that they do an internal EEG rather than an external EEG as this could show them where to biopsy.

Foreman wants to talk to House about his illness but House just leaves rather than have a personal conversation.

The father signs the consent for the inter-cranial EEG procedure … and the team begins to drill into Patricks head to figure out what the problem really is. As this is going on you see Foreman talking with the father telling him that his son could have cancer or an autoimmune disorder and that the test will help them figure that out. The father asks which ailment might be better to have and Foreman says neither. -

Foreman comes in with the results but won’t show House until he can say what he wants to House. He tells House he’s an arrogant ass but he likes him. House doesn’t believe him and says that he annoys Foreman.

the intra-cranial eeg shows no electrical abnormalities, but it does show that the entire right hemisphere is brain dead .. … this gives House pause as he looks up concerned.

Patrick is getting worse. His respirations have decreased, seizures are worse. House doesn’t believe that Patricks right brain is dead … he thinks he might still have some neurons firing.

House walks into the patients room with Foreman and they cover his right eye he can see the piano, but when they cover his left eye he pauses like he doesn’t know what he’s seeing or is not seeing anything at all. House starts to play the piano. (doesn’t make sense .. left brain controls right side so he should have been able to see out of his right eye) the patient mimics what House played.

Music is a global process and he says that he can’t play the piano with half a brain, so his right brain must have some activity. They decide that Patrick must have an autoimmune disease.

In the next scene, House is looking out the window as Chase enters to talk to him. House says he’s sorry that he’s dying “I’m gonna hug you” and steps forward and gives him a big hug as House says “well if you’re considering grabbing my ass, don’t start anything you can’t finish” as he endures the hug.

House tries to talk about the kids treatment as they hug since it goes on forever and they wonders if Chase is crying. Chase breaks the hug and says respirations are up, seizures are down, all good.

“Not for what I’m gonna do next” says House. Chase says he’s gonna be fine, but House says he can make him better than being a 4 year old for the rest of his life.

House shows up at Cuddy’s house in the middle of the night … she staggers to the door as house peers in the doors peep whole as she looks out and opens the door.

House tells Cuddy that his patient has an autoimmune disorder - takausis syndrome. He goes on to say that the disorder is very uncommon and happens mainly in asian women. Cuddy replies that the disorder is manageable. She assumes he’s there for something else, to which House replies that the patient also has signifigant seizure syndrome. Cuddy again replies that this disorder is manageable.

That’s when House suggests that a hemispherectomy would completely stop the right brain seizure activity and he’d would no longer need to take his anti-convulsive medications Cuddy interjects that you can’t remove half a brain and gain function .. House thinks that with Patrick he might gain function with the bad part of his brain removed.

Cuddy asks what the father wants to do and tells House to go wake him up. Then she tells House that she’s “so sorry” and she offers that she’s hear if he needs her and he says he “I need you” and she walks up and hugs him. From a distance we see his left hand reach for her buttocks “one small feel for man, one giant ass for mankind” he says. she says thanks good luck in Boston and call the make a wish foundation.

House goes to the hospital to talk with Patricks father and tells him that if the right side of the brain is removed that will stop the seizures. He also explains that the left side could actually function, and he’d learn to do new things but he’d never play the piano again. The father says he doesn’t mind taking care of him. House wants the son to have more in life - he wants him to have a life. The father pauses and appears to think bout their conversation as house leaves.

The team is in the lab testing samples. House is negative for protein PHF and doesn’t qualify for another cancer study. Then they bring up some scanned results and point to a dark spot saying that shouldn’t be there.

In the next scene the father is with his son as he sleeps. He wakes him to ask him if he’s happy. Patrick just repeats the question.

Next scene we see Patrick having surgery and a portion of his brain being removed. The father waits in the hall for the surgery to be finished.

Over at Houses apartment … Foreman pounds on the door to wake house. The team is there, all excited at the door. House complains that he has a plane to catch in three hours. They tell house “you don’t have cancer”. They found an abnormal presence of IGG and IGM in one of the tests. House cuts in to say that he doesn’t have neuro syphilis. Chase jumps in and says it’s a gumma? in the brain. It’s very rare not to be in the liver.

House is still denying that it could be syphilis. Yet Cameron tells him that his VDRL was a false negative. “Your not going to die you need IV antibiotics”

House then asks if the results sent to Mass general. They say yes and he calls them idiots. He was sure it was cancer …

He then says it’s not his file. The real patient is in the Witherspoon wing. House had wanted the guys in Boston to think that he had cancer because they were going to implant a cool drug into his brain pleasure center. Cameron says “you faked cancer to get high” .. they all stare at him ..

House says he’s going to bed. Foreman says you’re right i don’t like you. “Sure now that I’m not dying” House replies.

Wilson walks into Houses office, and says that he heard Patricks surgery went well. He then asks House how depressed he is, and accuses house of making them think he had cancer. House replies that he did try to hid it but others butted in.

Wilson says it’s ironic because dying alone is the cause of depression in most cancer patients and that House sort of did the opposite - faked the cancer and then pushed the people that care about him away. Wilson tells him to start small pizza with a friend, something as it might help make him feel better.

House exams Patrick, asks him to follow his finger asks if he knows his name. Patrick can’t reply because the speech center is affected, but it will take some time for him to start talking. Then they notice that Patrick starts buttoning his shirt on his own. Patrick looks proud of himself. His father is astonished. House says he looks happy.

In the last scene we see House walking on the street, watching people. He stops outside a bar and pauses to peer in. He looks hesitant but he eventually opens the door and walks into the pub.

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So what did you think? How would you rate the episode if 1 is the worst you’ve ever scene and 10 is the best episode ever?

House, Dr. house, half wit, Dave Matthews, Savant, brain damage, brain injury, savant, musical savant, Cancer, brain cancer, Massachusetts General, Boston, cancer treatment, depression, depression treatment, Hugh Laurie