House Hypochondria

House M.D is a hospital drama about solving medical mysteries. The ailments are almost always fatal and the patients are almost always saved from the jaws of death, or about 38 minutes into the 40 minute episodes. If we were to breakdown an episode, most of it concerns the specialist and expert crew of House’s (that’s Hugh Laurie) lackeys brainstorming potential suspects (it’s usually a tumour), whilst prescribing the wrong treatment three or four times, nudging their patients ever closer to death, as the time ticks loudly away.

It sounds like a good show, I know – that’s why I watch it. The intro to each episode starts with a new set of characters who seem healthy enough, or show only the mildest of clues that they may be ill – a cough, a twinge, a bleeding anus. So each episode is a guessing game of whose seriously ill. You see teenager reach for his prescription medicine, and you begin to think, this guy ain’t looking so good. But it’s usually a red herring, because his mum is now clutching her chest as she takes a sharp intake of breath. The onset of a cardiac arrest? No, it’s turns out to just be heartburn because who’s really got our attention now is the boy with cream coming out of his ears as he goes into a seizure. The point here is that, everyone seems healthy enough, and the person who hits the deck is never who you think it is. How is that these people, who exhibit little or no symptoms, are suddenly attacked by the most violent and often humiliating of viruses?

This show seems to be suggesting that this is how life-threatening illnesses make themselves apparent. Striking without warning and with maximum damage or a mysteriously bleeding anus (that one’s happened a few times, actually). This must be the worst show to watch for hypochondriacs, as it encourages the view that even common symptoms are indicative of something far more foreboding. I myself have fallen prey to this alarmist response to anything unusual in my body’s function. Every twitch of the eye, creak of the neck, every skipped heartbeat and bleeding anus becomes transformed into a death sentence, masquerading under the names lupus, Wilson’s disease and lymphoma (my medical knowledge has skyrocketed since tuning in). It’s become difficult to function since worrying about every hurty knee and itchy nipple (so far just temporary).

What’s scarier still is just how fast the patient’s health declines, and how it pushes the genius House to his mental limits until someone makes an off the cuff remark about another case that just happens to link to his, like, “the woman’s having twins,” or perhaps someone’s anecdote triggers a moment of realisation, shown through a big close up of House. With a face that says, ‘My god, it’s been there all along. It’s been staring us in the face this whole time, how could I have been so stupid? Wilson!’

Of course, most of the ailments are easily treatable, so that the episodes can end happily, but the bigger problem facing the team of specialists is the correct diagnosis. Throughout each episode they exhaust so many options, performing expensive tests one after the other. You get the sense that normal doctors are idiots, and if weren’t for this detective department that is unique to that hospital, all these patients would die, the reasons only becoming clear on autopsy.

So where can we turn? If you’re British, you’re lucky enough to have the NHS. What’s great about the NHS is its self-diagnosing facilities on its website. Now an informed database of symptoms and their corresponding illnesses can be accessed by those who looking for comfort in their time of worry. It uses a traffic light system to let you know how scared you should be. Green is ‘visit your GP.’ This is the least scared you should be, and yet you still need to see a doctor. There are apparently no symptoms where the website simply tells you to ‘Not bother, there’s nothing to worry about.’ I would at least expect a ‘Put an icepack on it you idiot.’ Surely a program with such a wealth of knowledge could afford to be more specific in such minor cases of health issues, such as ‘apply Deep Heat to area of pain’ or ‘make vertical incision along trachea.’

What should be next in this traffic light system is amber (it’s orange, really), but the NHS feels that anything more urgent than a skin rash is a serious threat, and so you are presented with a red page that screams at you to dial 999 and ask for an ambulance. And if the whole red page thing didn’t quite shout danger enough, they’ve also provided an exclamation point in an orange triangle.

The combination of shows like House M.D and the NHS’s hysterical advice page is enough to send hypochondriacs into a frenzy. I can understand the sensationalism of entertainment, but the NHS is basically asking for timewasters and really annoying ‘self-diagnosers.’

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my nipples are raised again, which either means I’m cold, or dying. The emergency services have been informed.