First day, sun shines
It was the first day of the new interviewers, there you were with your number assigned sitting in a room which seemed to be used for giving lectures. Lucky number nineteen you thought to yourself sipping the nice warm mint tea with lemon, checked your watch to realize your boss was half an hour late and you were getting anxious until a loud sound got you out of your thoughts. It was him, Dr. House, a renowned diagnostician, you didn't know if it was for his skill or his charming treat with people although it was half of the job requirement since to diagnose someone you have to know them but House managed to do that without even talking to the patients.
“Get prepared. This is going to be the most long, exhausting and draining interview of your life but it will guarantee you the best experience and job of your life. Look both sides because by tomorrow one or more of you will be gone.”
House was going to continue talking until the door of the auditorium swung open by his former colleague Dr. Alison Cameron with something in her hand that seemed to be a patient's file.
“Someone got me a present. Must be my lucky day!”
“If by present you mean someone dying then yes”
“Oh aren't you adorable?. Class, meet Dr. Cameron, do not listen to any gossip she has to say about me because definitely it's not true!”
“A twelve year old kid just got brought to the ER. Symptoms are anemia, failure to thrive, occasional seizures, abnormal sweating and recurring ear infections. Take this seriously, House, the kid is in much pain and nobody knows why.”
“Thank you very much for your service, we will honor it by doing our best. Now get back to stitching and cleaning wounds” Said House while getting up from the desk he was sitting from. He waited for Cameron to get out of the room to start the diagnosis. “Well is your time to shine so rise and shine, make random groups of ten each. Group A will investigate environmental, meaning house and school. Group B gets an accurate history of the patient and remember everybody lies. Group C starts to do the testing! Blood drawn, bacterial cultures, full body scans and head CT. And last but not least, group D go wash my car. Chop, chop!.”
After House assigned the tasks, you directed yourself with your team to do the tests and labs. You divided your work between the ten of you to save a lot of time to diagnose the patient. You were assigned to draw the blood meanwhile your fellow asked for an urine sample and a stool one, while you were doing your task you noticed a small bump which was round, probably 3 millimeters long and felt warm to the touch
“Hey, sorry to interrupt but can you come to take a look at this. It wasn’t there before, I mean Cameron didn’t mention it neither did his parents so this must be new. We should let our fellows know when they do the scans to see if they can identify the mass. Otherwise we will have to do a biopsy to rule out infection or cancer”
“He has cancer?” The parents asked
“No, what my fellow was trying to say is that when the team do the full body scan they should look into it since in some images it can be detected if it is an infection or cancer but this is something that get us closer to the diagnosis actually”
You both left the room and headed to the lab to meet with your team, once you delivered the blood sample, you decided that updating Cameron would be a good idea since she was the one that brought the case. Also it could give you any ideas of what might be going on.
“Dr Cameron!” you called in hopes she heard you. Not that she was far away or there were too many people in the ER but being shy and having to overcome that wasn’t a great feeling now working for House since you’ll just get over it.
“Hey! You are one of Dr House's new puppets, huh?”
“I hope so. Maybe if I'm lucky enough he will let me perform in his play. But I wanted to talk about the case you brought actually, I was extracting some blood when I noticed a small bump, it was like three millimeters long and it felt hot to the touch but the texture wasn’t clear enough by hand so we are waiting on the MRI to see if we can distinguish cancer or infection without doing a biopsy. Did you felt it and forgot to mention or saw something weird”
“No, nothing like that. Although I’m assuming part of you believes that the immune system is compromised otherwise you wouldn’t be here”
“Maybe. It seems so strange that something would appear in less than an hour. When we have something I will come back to update you” You pager started going on - The MRI is ready -
Upon examination of the test that was performed it was noted that there were inflammatory issues not only on his arm but also in the back of the neck and the left leg. Also the ear swabs grew cultures indicating an ear infection and the blood showed that the anemia was still there even though the ER had been giving him iron supplements. The imaging was undefying.
“So how did the idiotics doctors who saw the patient missed the inflammatory bulges?” You raised your arm “You are not children, so speak up if you have something to say”
“Sorry, not sure what the protocol was. But the arm one appeared between Dr. Cameron examination and me taking the kids blood”
“Snitching won’t get you a place in my team”
“I know, but I consider this an obligation since Dr Cameron brought the case and asked you therefore us to treat this kid and find out what is wrong so we need all the information we can get”
“Did you find anything?”
“We ruled out autoimmune”
“So infection or environmental”
“Tested everything in the house nothing could make the kid this sick but yet still expecting results in the school stuff”. Someone pointed out
“Well, hope this kid doesn’t die while you got nothing” House says. Beeper goes off -The patient room flash on it - Group C go to that page
As soon as you enter the room you see the patient unconscious having a heart attack. Once your co worker shocked him and got him to a normal sinus rhythm, you decided to put on your stethoscope to hear the heart but instead you catch weird lung sounds which are not distinguished. You decided to go to the lab and reread everything about the case to see if anything rings any bells. “Heart attack, mumbled lung sounds, anemia, rare lumps through the body some of them formed in a hospital bed, seizures and” you were muttering to yourself then you heard a voice “Enough about symptoms what about a freaking diagnosis” said your future boss standing behind you.
“Well you interrupted my thought process now is going to be harder”
“At least the autopsy will be very revealing” You turned around still sitting on your stool to face him. “What about the stone man disease? I know it is crazy but everything fits. Also it's the kind of crazy idea you would think about”
“Okay, I´ll send group D to confirm your diagnosis, good job nineteen. See you tomorrow"