Fidelity (House)

House (TV series) episode
episode_name = Fidelity
episode_no = HOU-107
airdate = December 28, 2004
writer = Thomas L. Moran
director = Bryan Spicer
guest_star = Dominic Purcell
as Ed Snow
Clementine Shepherd-Ford
as Samantha Campbell
Myndy Crist
as Elise Snow


season = 1
diagnosis = African trypanosomiasis

Fidelity is the seventh episode of the first season of "House", which premiered on the FOX network on December 28, 2004. A female patient shows signs of African sleeping sickness, but in order to find out what is wrong the team has to ask some uncomfortable questions.

Plot

A man named Ed returns home from a jog with his best friend to find his spouse sick in bed. Elise has remained there for days. At the hospital, Cameron tells House that the patient has been sleeping 18 hours a day, but the tests don’t reveal anything.

After being unable to immediately diagnose her condition, House orders new blood work and another MRI. After more testing, she goes into seizures.

House starts to suspect breast cancer. He also inquires about Elise’s relationship with her husband. Cameron sets up a mammogram, and Elise reveals that her mother was about the same age when she died of cancer. The new tests show no tumors. Wilson thinks it’s a small cell tumor, which is hard to locate. House wants to ignore the tumor until it gets bigger. House sends Foreman to Elise’s workplace at a restaurant. The chef is adamant that the kitchen is perfectly clean, but Foreman notices that the restauant serves rabbit, causing him to later suggest the possibility of Tularemia despite symptoms not being a perfect fit.

Cameron is talking to Elise when she complains that her arm itches, then hallucinates her arm bursts open and hundreds of ants crawl out. Tests are still inconclusive and House believes that all of her symptoms fit in with an African Sleeping sickness despite having never been to Africa or ever having had a transfusion.

Cameron, Foreman and Chase consider amongst themselves to start treatments anyway, but each of those treatments would cause more problems. House then has a brainstorm. Anything that’s in the blood can be transmitted through sex. He dispatches Foreman and Chase to ask Ed and Elise about their fidelity. They both adamantly deny any affairs.

Elise drops into a coma while being treated with Chloramphenicol, while the team still has no explanation. Again, Ed claims he has not had an affair. House tells Ed that he is going to give her a potentially fatal medicine and needs his consent. If Ed suspects there might have even been one time Elise was unfaithful, then they need to start treatment immediately. Foreman and Chase inject her with the medicine melarsoprol.

Elise’s fever rises to 104 °F (40 °C). Just as House is telling Ed that they should have seen an improvement, Elise comes out of her coma. House tells Elise that he must know who she had an affair with so that the man can be alerted and given treatment. Elise cries, knowing that Ed has left her. Cameron tracks down Elise’s former lover, who has a young son, and surprisingly, it turns out to be Ed's best friend that he was jogging with in the beginning of the episode.

Trivia

* Melarsoprol as the treatment for Sleeping Sickness is currently being replaced with the safer suicide inhibitor Difluoromethylornithine for which effectiveness was discovered by accident in 2008.

External links

* [http://www.fox.com/house/ FOX.com-"House" official site]
* [http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/house/fidelity.php Television Without Pity recap]
* [http://epguides.com/House/ House Episode Guide at epguides.com]
* [http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/house/100213/ TVGuide's Page: Full list of House Episodes]
* [http://www.housemd-guide.com/ House M.D. Guide]
* [http://politedissent.com/archives/488 Medical Reviews of House: Fidelity]