Why Does House Limp?
House is a character from the television show, House, M.D. focusing on Dr. Gregory House, played by an incredible actor, Hugh Laurie.
House’s limp is due to an infarction that happened in his leg during a game of golf. This is all explained in the episode ‘Three Stories., During this episode, House substitutes for a colleague’s class, and discusses three various real cases in the past with the students, all involving legs. The first two are innocuous ‘š they don’t really matter to the plotline of his story; but the third is first discussed at the beginning as another innocuous character ‘š he transforms a few times to the viewer (as though in the imagination), before House’s team, who is sitting in on this class, realizes that it is him, and then the character in the ‘imagination, parts transforms into House.
Because of his past, the doctors treating House for his leg pain thought that he was simply seeking drugs to feed an addiction and that there was no real problem; thus his infarction went undiagnosed for a full three days before House himself made the diagnosis. An aneurism in his thigh had clotted, which caused the infarction, killing much of the muscle in his thigh muscle, or quadriceps. House wanted his necrotic, or dead, muscle tissue to be bypassed in order to restore full function to the rest of his leg; however this process was incredibly dangerous as it could lead to organ failure and cardiac arrest ‘š this would also cause excruciating pain during rehabilitation to restore full use. However, during his pre-operative coma which they placed him to endure the pain, House’s at-the-time girlfriend and medical proxy opted for a less risky procedure to remove the dead tissue, and still retain partial use of the leg, with less pain than the post-op rehab of House’s choice, but pain that would stay with him, causing him to become dependant on Vicodin to relieve his pain, and uses a cane for an irreparable limp.
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