Under My Skin (House)

"Under My Skin" is the twenty-third episode of the fifth season of House, which aired on May 4, 2009.

House and the team are given the challenge of diagnosing a ballerina, Penelope (Jamie Tisdale) whose lungs collapse during rehearsal. Initially apprehensive over the prospect of never dancing again, the ballerina faces an even more grim possibility when the treatment causes her skin to fall off. House must solve this daunting puzzle, even while going to extreme measures to rid himself of his continuing hallucinations of Amber.

Meanwhile, Cameron informs Chase that she wishes to keep her dead husband's sperm, which they had frozen before his death. She explains that while she wants to marry Chase, the future is uncertain, and she wants to retain her "insurance policy" in case things go wrong. Chase is affronted, responding that he is certain of their future, and does not like the idea of her having a backup plan for their marriage. He indefinitely postpones their marriage until Cameron feels the same way.

House confides in Wilson about his problem, and they create a list of potential diagnoses, ranging from MS to schizophrenia. While House tests for and eliminates diagnosis after diagnosis, Wilson consults on House's case, serving as a monitor to make sure House does nothing that goes beyond "House-radical" to "House-out-of-his-head-radical". Meanwhile, House eliminates all possible diagnoses but severe mental illness and Vicodin addiction—both prognoses bleak, as House would be unable to practice medicine if taking anti-psychotics, or if in continuous pain after detox. In desperation, House gives himself insulin shock as an alternative to anti-psych drugs or ECT. After recovering from the insulin-induced coma, House finds himself free of his hallucination and eagerly returns to the diagnosis of his patient.

Returning to the case, House finds Penelope's boyfriend's devotion suspicious, and believing it to be guilt-induced, tells his team to test him for gonorrhea. The test returns positive, but it becomes evident that the boyfriend was shocked by this, and that Penelope had been cheating on him, not the other way around. As House realizes that he reached the correct conclusion by accident rather than through accurate observation, he once again starts to have hallucinations of Amber.