House, M.D.: How House Injured His Leg
House, M.D.’s Gregory House spent the entire series walking with a cane and popping pain pills – but what caused his addiction-inducing injury?
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House, M.D.’s Gregory House suffered a leg injury that left him with severe pain for the rest of his life, but it wasn’t until the penultimate episode of the first season that fans learned his injury was caused by an infarction incurred while golfing. Cynical, often cruel, and yet undeniably a genius, Dr. Gregory House was the protagonist of the long-running Fox medical drama House, M.D..
The show aired from 2004-2012 and followed the lives of Gregory House and his colleagues at the Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, where he frequently used unorthodox (and often illegal) methods to diagnose and cure his patients. House, whose character was loosely based off of Sherlock Holmes, was notorious around the hospital for his disregard for other people, and their emotions – his famous catchphrase was “everybody lies.”
House himself was no exception to this rule – and often skirted questions from his colleagues about much of his personal life, including what happened to him that led to his dependence on a cane and a Vicodin addiction. The story behind his leg injury was finally explained in season 1, episode 21, “Three Stories”, where it was revealed that House’s leg injury was caused by an infarction that eventually got so bad doctors suggested amputating.
In “Three Stories”, House tells a group of medical students about three separate cases he worked on, and one of which turns out to be the story of how he ended up with his leg injury. He was out playing golf five years before the events of the show when he suffered from an infarction (an internal blockage of an artery) in his leg. Unfortunately for House, the only initial symptom was pain, and by the time he realized how serious the injury actually was, there was so much muscle and tissue death that amputation seemed like the best course of action.
However, House refused to amputate and instead underwent a risky bypass surgery with an incredibly painful recovery process. The pain during his recovery was so bad that House was placed in a medically induced coma, which meant that his then-girlfriend Stacy had control over his medical care since she was his medical proxy. Stacy ended up using her power as his proxy to have the dead tissue in his leg surgically removed.
The surgery to remove the tissue was what left House with the crippling pain that he has on the show, but the injury went far deeper than the physical symptoms. By ignoring his wishes and having House operated on while he was comatose, Stacy shattered the trust between them, and their relationship soured quickly after. Stacy left him, and the pain in his leg became so unbearable that he developed an addiction to Vicodin, which is the state viewers find him in when House, M.D. begins.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/house-leg-injury-infarction-three-stories/