Hee! I usually just write "XXX" but yeah, I do that too. *browses further through House transcripts* In "Merry Little Christmas" they also mention that House has tried tramadol and acetaminophen with codeine.

Yeah, when I'm doing a medical plot I do lots of research, mainly by googling, and then just stuff it in how it sounds right (to me). In this case, though, it's just a passing mention, so I didn't worry about it too badly.

I do what March 301 does if I just want to have them doing some doctor-type stuff while at work--just throw out some random symptom, test, or treatment. I try to mix it up, but I think patients in my version of the House-verse tend to come down with seizures a little more often than one would expect. If the medical stuff is important to the plot, I usually research as I go along. I've found that if wing it, or I just put "TECHNOBABBLE" in brackets and come back to it, it bites me in the ass when I do. For instance, "Limericks" had a whole scene where House needle-biopsied Wilson's testicle, then I did my research and found out that an ultrasound is diagnostic for testicular cancer--so I had to ditch the biopsy and change it to an ultrasound, and several good jokes were lost in the shuffle. Speaking of medical stuff, does anyone else use wrongdiagnosis.com? You can just check off some symptoms on a list, and up pops a list of things your imaginary patient could have. Or you can pick a popular disease and then find a list of other things it could be, useful if you're following the show's pattern of two wrong answers before the right one.

I love wrongdiagnosis.com. That, and Wikipedia, and random googling--together, those three can help me put together a pretty convincing load of medical bullshit. Doesn't mean you shouldn't get a good medical beta when the time comes for posting, of course. Even if you ignore their suggestions for plot or character reasons, you can make it sound better just by having your characters ask the obvious questions that your medical beta does.

I use wrongdiagnosis.com and lots of Googling, but my favorite is eMedicine.com. Easy to use, with in-depth, informative articles detailing everything from symptoms to ER care to possible treatments and drugs to use. Great stuff.

I do heavily medical plots, and I find it useful to have an actual doctor to ask questions to. eMedicine is great, but nothing beats a Q&A with someone who has a medical degree, and can read what you've written and tell you if it's accurate or not!

Me, I've got to know where I'm going, so I'll stop the story dead to go look up stuff just so I get those medical issues more or less correct before the story itself goes on. It's almost as if House refuses to speak technobabble for me, because he knows better, so he won't cooperate until I give him the proper words. A good medical beta is a great resource, though. When I was working on the writing workshop project that produced "The Guilty Parties," Topaz Eyes provided a lot of the technical support, and also wouldn't let me get away with just referring to putting a test in the scanner. She told me what type of scanner it would be, and I looked up the types of data it would provide. Did anyone else care? Probably not, but it was satisfying to me to get the right information.

There's something very satisfying about knowing I've got my facts straight. Whether it's the name of a street or a plane schedule, I want to know that anything I'm writing about it possible if not probable. As far as I can remember, I've never written a story with a medical plot. Recent developments have made me much more comfortable with medical terminology, but I'm still not sure I should try to use this 'skill' n a story.

I just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow or what was it on Startrek TNG they always used to do - reroute the deflecter beams? But I think a little bit of credibility is handy as it doesn't take the reader out of the story going what the heck?

As a medically literate reader, major errors annoy me, but minor ones just make me shrug - its not like the medicine on the show is the most accurate stuff out there anyway :roll: (hey, Namaste!)

I've run into trouble by trying to be too accurate - I worked nine years in an Australian hospital, so I'd just write what we'd do, and then find out after I posted that US hospitals work differently. Some days, I tell you... *g*

Yeah, and even then all hospitals work slightly different from the House-World ones. I had started out with the medical-type stories as my favorites to write, due to the research. Then, when I started to know the characters better, I liked writing their interactions more. I've also noticed now that since I've started training in nursing that I want to shy away from writing medically based stories as I know I will get the facts wrong mixed with licensure/scope of practice makes me much more nervous about messing up.

OK, here's one that I hate. When people summarize their fics over at the pit with "I suck at summaries" or when they don't know that the proper title for a fic should have all words capitalized!!! The title thing is almost a clear indicator about how the grammar and what not is going to be in the fic.