House had spent half the night getting up and down because he kept needing to pee. A while back he diagnosed himself with a bladder infection and got Wilson to prescribe antibiotics. Despite taking the antibiotics, the infection seemed to be worse. He was starting to notice some blood in his urine. While he knew bloody urine wasn't common with a bladder infection, House was so caught up in his current case that he was following his usual habit of ignoring his own body. After all, House was used to living in constant pain since the infarction.

Ever since he detoxed from the vicodin, he tried to tell himself that the pain had improved. In reality, House knew the pain seemed to be getting worse.

At about 7:30 (an early morning for House) his cell phone began to ring. Unfortunately it was Taub updating him on the patient's latest crisis. He hung up on Taub and groaned as he pulled himself into a sitting position blindly groping for the highly ineffective ibuprofen on his nightstand. Throwing the ibuprofen back, House eased his legs over the side of the bed. Lately he had been feeling pain in his right hip and increasing fatigue in both thighs. He was starting to suspect arthritis from the strange gait he had adopted ever since the infarction and that the additional thigh pain was from attempts to compensate. This morning, the pain was the worst it had been since detox and he figured he should probably get an MRI to look at the area causing this extreme pain. The only problem with that would be he would actually have to tell someone. If only he could be in the MRI machine and running the test at the same time. Unfortunately, MRIs weren't designed as self-serve equipment.

If he told Wilson about the pain, he would probably drive him nuts about it. He'd probably plop him down in a wheelchair until he made sure there was no additional damage, want to check for further clots, and generally torture him with sad puppy eyes and paranoia. That kind of fun could just wait.

He figured a hot shower might work and that he should get his butt to work because this latest case was getting more interesting. The hot shower helped a bit. As he eased his clothes on, he wondered if he would even be able to get onto his motorcycle today. He decided he should take the car since he'd be doing good just to get out to the car, into the hospital, past Cuddy, and to his office.

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