A/N my whole life I've suffered from leg cramps that cause me a lot of pain (say a... 6 on the pain scale, and i do have a relatively high pain tolerance) these cramps will incapacitate me for sometimes over an hour and eventually I can walk it out. All this to say, while I don't experience Houses pain on a daily, I do understand what it's like to be bedridden by a leg cramp that radiates from your calf to hip and makes your toes go numb. I figured I'd use my experience to write something (don't ask me why I didn't think of this before...)
Let me know what you think!
In House's life, every step was a risk. He carefully calculated each step as the muscles in his leg tightened frightfully. A constant burn throbbed in his thigh as the damaged limb would pulse and squeeze around his femur; occasionally trying to break free.
Big cramps or seizes were always preferred in the diagnosticians world. They would determine the rest of the day. Seizing would mean a bad day- maybe the barometric pressure was off, weather or trauma but a small cramp, ache or simple tremor could catch him off guard. It could mean a baseline day, where the pain would be tolerable or it could buckle below him unexpectedly and the day would be pure agony.
Laying in bed, writhing against the sheets felt pitiful to the diagnostician. No position he could find would've ever been comfortable, each angle causing equal damage to his pain-racked body. He fought so hard not to cry out; almost succeeding. Small whines and gasps escaped his mouth and he suffered alone. House's entire body was stuck tensely- as if afraid to give the pain an edge.
The rock hard muscles couldn't be soothed with a massage and instead would twitch and thrive in their own volition. Minutes faded to hours and as the hours passed by, so did his ability to stay conscious against the pain shooting down his his leg into his calf, numbing his foot and causing a tingling in his toes. The cripple hip locked and he cried out- tearful eyes eventually falling unconscious.