Lucky Thirteen (House)

"Lucky Thirteen" is the fifth episode of the fifth season of House and the ninety-first episode overall. It aired on October 21, 2008.

House saws off the end of Wilson's office chair. Wilson falls to the floor and sees that House has placed a donut and milk there. He starts eating. House asks where Wilson has been, as he has been waiting for an hour. Wilson says he had a meeting at his favorite diner which leads House to wonder why he ate the donut, because Wilson always eats at his diner. He decides to follow Wilson with Lucas.

Spencer (Angela Gots), a woman with whom Thirteen is having a one-night stand, has a seizure at Thirteen's apartment. Thirteen accompanies her to Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital where House and the team take the case. House remains more focused on Thirteen's bisexuality and finds the situation an opportunity to delve into her personal life. House and Foreman go to Thirteen's apartment to search for drugs that might have caused Spencer's illness.

Thirteen suspects that the woman's illness is related to her drug use, but she then finds out that the woman has a long medical history and has seen several doctors over the past few years, along with discovering that she only slept with Thirteen to get to House, who had not accepted her as a patient despite her trying to see him for over a year. Foreman tells Thirteen what he found at her house: a slip of paper that shows Thirteen's Huntington's progressing faster than she thought it was. He also confronts her about her current hard-partying lifestyle, warning her that it is sending her life and job into a downward spiral.

After Cuddy catches Thirteen with a terrible hangover, she wants Thirteen to submit to a drug test. After preventing Thirteen from having to be tested, House fires her for missing the differential diagnosis. Despite being technically unemployed and off the case, Thirteen remains at the hospital. When it is determined Spencer's illness, Lymphangioleiomyomatosis, is fatal, Thirteen volunteers to tell her, saying that no one should hear such a death sentence from the cold, uncaring House. Later, House has a brainstorm and asks Thirteen if Spencer cried when she heard the bad news. Thirteen says no. House then determines the true cause of the girl's illness based upon her inability to produce tears, a symptom of her illness, candidiasis (a fungal infection) secondary to Sjögren's syndrome, an autoimmune disorder in which immune cells destroy exocrine glands that produce tears and saliva.