Posted by I.A.

Big Brother has morphed into ER. Actually, given the amount of sex in the house this season, it's more like Grey's Anatomy. Or to get literary on ya, maybe Season 9 will end up like Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, where houseguests will get carried out one by one until the last survivor wins. CBS will save on jury sequester fees that way.

We had, in the space of less than an hour, two separate houseguests attended to with medical situations. Amanda passed out in full sight of the camera after mentioning that she was looking for permission to supplement her slop diet because she was hypoglycemic. Now, ordinarily I wouldn't put it past Amanda to create a scenario for the sake of sympathy, considering she's both on slop and on the block, but the incident looked reasonably convincing (the houseguests were certainly convinced), and hypoglycemia is, I would assume, something that would be picked up by any doctors Amanda saw.

What I'm curious about is how much was known about her hypoglycemia before she came on the show. It would stand to reason that a pretty substantial medical history (not including mental health screening, obviously) is part of the normal casting process, at least in the later stages. Silly eating challenges are often part of the show, and of course, the slop diet is something that almost everyone has to deal with at some time or another. How is it possible to put someone on slop if they are known to have a significant diet issue? The fact that Amanda got immediate (pretty much) medical attention as was back in the house with a few hours is beside the point--someone shouldn't be put in position where they are passing out due to a fairly trivial part of the game.

Right around the time Amanda had her incident, Allison also needed medical attention due to an apparent severe allergic reaction to something. There was some talk in the house about her eating a peanut, but Allison didn't seem to know about a peanut allergy or any other kind, and further tests are apparently needed. There wasn't any video footage of Allison all swollen, but the description we got was good enough.

In addition to the ladies that actually saw doctors, Natalie spent much of the night complaining about migraine symptoms, and of course, there was Sheila and her now world-famous yeast infection. Honestly, we heard that phrase more today in the house--more, in fact, in the course of one brief fight between Sheila and Allison--than we heard it in the previous eight seasons. I try to be adult about this sort of thing, but in reality I'm a normal American male and my tolerance for this subject is...mild. Unfortunately, for much of the day the only subject in the house appeared to be the infection and who told who about it.

One of the differences between BB people and the rest of us is that houseguests are typically very eager to openly mention things that most of us want to keep secret, and yeast infections fall into that category. But Sheila opened up about it, and nothing stays secret in the house for long. Apart from the inexplicably nasty fight with Allison, who had been her best friend in the house to that point and probably still is, Sheila is showing signs that she isn't going to make it for another two months. She complains constantly of boredom and insomnia, and spent most of the day looking like the photo at the top of this post.

I don't think Sheila will ever be Dick's equal when it comes to rages, but at least Dick achieved a sort of predictability. Sheila's come out of nowhere. It does make her feed interesting, no question.

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