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[[Category:Season 2]]
 
[[Category:Season 2]]
 
[[Category:Award Winners]]
 
[[Category:Award Winners]]
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[[Category:Zebra Factor 1]]

Revision as of 23:16, 9 December 2012

Season Two Episodes:

  1. Acceptance
  2. Autopsy
  3. Humpty Dumpty
  4. TB or Not TB
  5. Daddy's Boy
  6. Spin
  7. Hunting
  8. The Mistake
  9. Deception
  10. Failure to Communicate
  11. Need to Know
  12. Distractions
  13. Skin Deep
  14. Sex Kills
  15. Clueless
  16. Safe
  17. All In
  18. Sleeping Dogs Lie
  19. House vs. God
  20. Euphoria (Part 1)
  21. Euphoria (Part 2)
  22. Forever
  23. Who's Your Daddy?
  24. No Reason

Episodes12345678

This article is about the episode. For the procedure see Autopsy (procedure)

House: "Is it still illegal to perform an autopsy on a living person?"
Cuddy: "Are you high?"
―Autopsy

Autopsy is a 2nd season episode of House which first aired on September 20, 2005. A nine year old with terminal cancer who is hallucinating comes to the hospital. House thinks her bravery in the face of imminent death is actually a symptom of her condition. Meanwhile, House tries to get over a cold and test drives a motorcycle.

Screenwriter Lawrence Kaplow won the Writers Guild of America award for his screenplay for this episode.

Recap

A 9 year old terminal cancer patient has a seizure and hallucinations while getting ready for the day.

House comes in with a bad cold and is ready to leave, but Wilson intercepts him about the patient. House in intrigued about the hallucinations when he finds out there is no cancer in her brain and the cancer is in remission. House agrees to take the case.

The team is reviewing the patient's medical history, which contains a long line of treatment. They can't come up with a reason for the hallucinations. House orders a tox screen and an MRI. He tells Cameron not to get attached to the patient.

Chase takes the patient to the MRI. The patient is very familiar with all the technology. However, the MRI and tox screen are clear. House excuses himself to go home and orders them to run a lot of tests.

Chase gets ready to perform an angiogram. The patient asks him to kiss her because she hasn't been kissed. Chase does so.

House comes in the next morning, not having slept. All the new tests are negative. Foreman suggests it might be syphilis from involuntary sex. Chase tells them that she hasn't even been kissed and that she asked him to kiss her. House thinks that she is being manipulative and that she did get Chase to kiss her. However, the patient denies ever having had sex and Cameron's examination confirms it.

House interrupts Wilson to tell him that they have no idea what is wrong with the patient. House is still convinced there is something wrong, and he thinks it might be a heart tumor because of the low oxygen saturation. However, that would mean she has two different cancers - a statistical unlikelihood. Wilson is sceptical and won't let House do exploratory surgery.

House meets his team in the locker room so they can listen to the patient's heart to see if there are signs of a tumor. Cameron hears an extra flap in her mitral valve. House orders surgery to look at it.

Wilson and House discuss the patient's bravery. Wilson is impressed, but House isn't.

They find a tumor in her lung and heart, growing along the heart wall. They start to repair it. However, they may have to remove too much of the heart to repair it, and the tumor may have metastasized. During the surgery, the patient's eye starts bleeding.

However, he heart tumor is benign, and the eye bleeding obviously isn't related to it, and neither are the hallucinations. House thinks it might be a blood clot in her brain, thrown off by the heart tumor. They start looking for it. However, the angiogram is clean - there is a clot but they can't find it.

They can't do exploratory surgery on the brain, and they know the clot could cause death at any time.

House wonders how the patient will be when Wilson tells her she's going to die. An enraged Wilson tells House to go to Hell before storming off.

Wilson goes to tell the patient she will die. Her mother is more upset than she is. House wonders if the patient's bravery shows some form of brain damage which may be affecting her ability to feel fear. Foreman feels the only way they can find the clot is at the autopsy. However, this gives House an idea.

House asks Cuddy if he can induce a hypothermic cardiac arrest, drain half the patient's blood and re-infuse the blood to look for the clot with a portable MRI. Despite the risks, Cuddy agrees. Wilson goes to get consent from the mother. House learns that Wilson hasn't told the patient the risks, and surmises that perhaps the patient's bravery is from not knowing what is going on. House goes to talk to her about the risks of the procedure and how long she has to live even if they are successful. The patient doesn't want to die despite the fact that the treatment for her cancer will be painful because her mother needs her and she loves her.

A large surgical team tests the procedure on a corpse several times. They need to complete the procedure within one minute without bumping the body to get useful results. They finally find a solution to keep the blood lines from being moved - bolting them to the table. They start the procedure on the patient with a full house watching from the observation room. They cool her body temperature down to 21C (70F), sending her into atrial fibrillation. They then drain her blood and re-infuse it. Just after the end of the sixty seconds, Foreman spots a slowdown in blood flow in the hippocampus. With no time remaining, they start warming her up again. They re-start her heart and start surgery. They find the clot where Foreman saw it. The patient recovers, and is still brave. Wilson points out that the bravery obviously wasn't a symptom as the clot wasn't in her amygdyla. House admits he was wrong, but still isn't impressed. Wilson points out that the patient enjoys life more than House does, and could actually outlive him. The patient leaves the hospital after giving House a hug and then invites him for a walk.

House goes to test drive a motorcycle.

Clinic Patient

The patient requests a male doctor. House comes in and sees blood in the patient’s groin. He tried to circumcize himself with some box cutters when his girlfriend reacted poorly to his uncircumcised penis. House sends him to a plastic surgeon.

Major Events

  • House starts riding motorcycles for the first time since his infarction.

Zebra Factor 1/10

Clots are a common complication of many forms of cancer.

Trivia & Cultural References

  • The tune House plays in the locker room is Nessun dorma from Puccini’s Turandot.
  • Afghanistan is a country in central Asia with a population just less than that of California.
  • Al-Qaeda or “The Base“ is a militant terrorist group.
  • Buffalo is the second largest city in New York State and sits on the border with Canada.
  • The song Beautiful bookends the show. Andie sings it at the beginning and the version at the end was a cover by Elvis Costello recorded specifically for the episode.

Links


Previous episode:
Acceptance

Autopsy
Next episode:
Humpty Dumpty