Back at the hospital, it's Valentine's Day, which hasn't mellowed our resident grumptastic Dr. House one bit. He takes one look at Hannah, our car crash girl, and decides she has a genetic insensitivity to pain. Of course his curiosity is piqued, and he orders a gamut of tests. A nicely played and amusing game of one-ups-manship between House and Hannah makes it clear that his interest in her lack of pain is directly tied to his interest in relieving his own. (And of course the title could refer to either one of them.) Given this motivation, his pursuit of the case becomes a bit more obsessive than usual. And while he's involved in that, he also finds time to interfere with Cuddy's blind date.
The case this time is overly odd and extreme, which is typical for this show, but there are times when it seems they're reaching for oddness and extreme-ness. I guess after a while you start running out of bizarre ailments. Although that's part of the fun of the show--googling after or during to see how accurate they managed to be with the science. It's usually a mixed bag. I found an article about an inbred family in Pakistan whose members could not feel pain, and another article referring to Riley-Day syndrome , found among Ashkenazi Jews as referenced in the ep, although Hannah's condition was referred to as CIPA. What little I could find about CIPA didn't connect it to Ashkenazi Jews, but to other homogeneous societies (apparently it's more common in Japan, though still very rare). In this episode, though, Hannah's condition was finally traced to B12 deficiency caused by a tapeworm. I have no idea if that's accurate, and forgive me if I really, really don't want to google tapeworms.
Looks like another American Idol-induced hiatus is in store, pre-empting House for the next three weeks.
