House

This picture was taken from the following website:
http://nynjbengali.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/gregory-house-md.jpg

This past Sunday, September 11th, I watched an episode of "House." The episode was entitled "Sleeping Dogs Lie" and the original air date was April 18, 2006. Although it was an old episode, I found a startling connection with histology. 


The episode was about a lesbian couple, where one partner, Hannah, was deathly ill. She ends up at the hospital where House and his team work to cure her. She had various symptoms, one of which was insomnia. She was unable to sleep for almost ten days. This symptom put an extra rush on the doctors, though, because the human brain can only function for a maximum for ten days without sleep (or so they said on the show). Eventually, Hannah got worse and started bleeding. The blood sample, however, indicated the presence of nasal epithelia. Here's the link to histology. This wouldn't have been a startling connection with histology if the blood had come from her nose. She was, however, having rectal bleeding, which brings great surprise as to why nasal epithelia could be found here. The rest of the episode was filled with yet more drama, which is no surprise for this show, and eventually ended with Hannah needing a liver transplant. Being the ever loving and faithful partner, Max, the other partner in the relationship, donated half her liver to keep Hannah alive. Yet another "House" episode had a happy ending.


So...back to the histology connection presented. The rectal blood contained nasal epithelial cells, simply explaining that the blood came from the nose. This is logical because the patient developed a nose bleed before she was given a blood transfusion. The striking feature in all this to me was not the fact that nasal epithelial cells were found in the rectal blood, but rather, the fact that they were able to detect the presence of the nasal epithelial cells in her blood. This would, clearly, be an unlikely place to look for these cells. It occurred to me, however, after our many discussions in class, just how specialized this epithelium truly is and how creatively we were designed. As much room as there is for blood to move around in our bodies, each type of cell was specially and uniquely designed to fulfill an exact purpose. In this case, ciliated epithelium is suspected to be found in the nasal passages because the cilia help sweep out foreign substances from the beginning of the respiratory tract. Watching this episode was just a great reminder that something as simple as epithelium can teach us so much.