I’m a big fan of the television show House, in which British multitalent Hugh Laurie plays a surly-but-remarkable diagnostic expert whose team works on one rare, unlikely case after another. People I know who don’t enjoy the show usually say something along the lines of, “It’s so formulaic, and none of these conditions sound real or like they exist in real life.”

Yet in real life we encounter cases like this one, reported by the New York Times:

Over the next 10 days her daughter saw six different doctors, had many blood tests and scans and tried a dozen medicines. No one had a diagnosis or a cure. “There’s something wrong in my head,” the young woman kept repeating. “It’s just not right.”

On their last trip to the emergency room, her daughter went crazy. She was talking to people who weren’t there. She was afraid, paranoid. Then suddenly she became violent, lashing out at everyone around her. [...] The patient was taken to a psychiatric hospital. A few days later she developed a fever and was sent to yet another hospital. There she had a seizure. After that, she never woke up.

Don’t worry — it has a happy ending, much like the majority of House episodes. A great portion of why House appeals to me is the idea that even preposterous, confusing problems like this can be solved through human knowledge and collaboration. It may be a match on the fire, so to speak, but solving any “impossible” situation seems remarkable enough to me.

Hulu has an elucidative little interview with the cast of House on their episode vocabulary lists and the challenges of medical terminology in acting.

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