Why doesn't House use the Internet?

Let's see if you Googlicious sleuths find the same answer I did for a friend who described the following:

A young woman works at a family-style restaurant in the evenings, and last night took a break for dinner. Had a tuna steak salad with vinaigrette dressing - something she's had numerous times before with all the same ingredients from the same kitchen. Went back to waitressing. All of the sudden her face flushes and feels as is it is on fire. Spreads to chest and arms. She's visibly red to everyone. Heart racing like she's just run around the block. Pounding headache. Next day she's fine, but wondering what hit her.

I believe I found it, totally by chance, wandering from diagnosis and medical sites and PubMed to online symptom checkers to trolling message boards. Any guesses?

I'll post my hypothesis tomorrow.

Comments

  1. House has a brilliant sexy brain and doesn't need the internet lol I LOVE HOUSE btw, so of course im gonna say that. Seriously the man of my dreams, but anyway.

    I dont know, it seems like a sudden development of tuna allergies, strange thing is why it suddenly effected her. I read a forum that talked about how some people say the reaction to intolerance to alcohol (say in asians for instance, they have a tendency to become very flushed and feel like their skin is on fire when they drink) it is very similar to how one person described their allergy to raw tuna. I wonder if there is a tie between allergy to alcohol and allergy to tuna?

    Also since some vinaigrette also has ingredients that are fish based some times people with allergy to fish may not know to avoid vinaigrette, maybe it was a double wammy for her?

    So in short, i am not sure, but it does seem like an allergic reaction.

    One thing i found is that tuna allergies are uncommon and the symptoms are varied. It mentioned that it is hard to know if a person will react badly to tuna because it is so rare.

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  2. Scromboid fish poisoning ?
    M

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  3. Food poisining is too easy of a guess. Maybe, bulimia or a wrong combination of diet pills or a common mistake is mixing midol and laxatives?

    House doesn't check the internet because he had Dr. Cameron do all his secretarial work.

    BTW, it's interesting that he always made fun of the fact that she is underweight and said things like "You don't weigh enough to get your period" and "You don't weigh more than 100 pounds"

    And she always just let it slide. She didn't react or deny. She just stayed quiet.

    Since anorexia causes insomnia, I mostly stayed up thinking and preparing for all kinds of scenerios where people would confront me about eating or not.

    In livejournal and other groups, I
    learned that the most perfect response was just letting it slide and saying nothing. If I said something then people could get really, really mad or they might believe that I wanted to change. If I stayed quite long enough, the person would just end up getting tired of venting and walk away.

    It's kinda of eerie how they did get that part right.

    Anyways, after I saw the episodes where he treated the lady who had bulimia or the one where he made fun of the man who was anorexic, I asked my regular doctor for help. I figured that my doctor couldn't be any worse than him.

    After he weighed me, he stared at the chart and then he lifted the bottom of my jeans to see if I was wearing ankle weights. (Well, at least he knew that much.)

    Then, he sat by his computer and ordered lot's of lab work and told me to come back in 3 weeks. (Silly doc. doesn't realize that people with Ed's get fixated on weighing less at each visit.)

    B.

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  4. Wow. Two of you got it independently. I shouldn't bother sleuthing: just do a blog post for my clever readers!!

    Yes, I think it is Scromboid fish poisoning, too. It isn't an allergy to the tuna, it is a specific pathogen that grows on certain fish under certain circumstances. Cooking kills the original histidine, but not the toxin left behind. Not all people are affected by this kind of poisoning, and not all people respond the same way when they are.

    The good news is: not a fish allergy. The bad news is: know how your fish has been stored.

    Fun facts on House, btw, I missed all that entirely - thank you!

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