September 15, 2013 - Human Testing
Two things: 1. Turns out I'm a hypocrite, and 2. I don't
have to be abducted by aliens to have invasive tests performed on me--I can
sell my body to science for that.
I've known for a good part of my life that I'm not monetarily
driven. Once, during my days as a broke-poor athlete, I turned down the chance
to write a three page paper for $50, not for the honorable reason that cheating
is wrong, but rather that the subject matter was boring and fifty dollars wasn't
good enough incentive for the mental tedium. I could really have used that
money. Another time, one of my siblings asked, “Would you drink a bottle of
Tabasco Sauce for one thousand dollars?” My question was, “How big is the
bottle?”
Of course this was hypothetical since neither of us had one thousand
dollars to blow on a gimmick. As a matter of fact neither of us had a thousand
dollars for anything. But I wouldn’t have done it anyway. In a third instance I
was offered twenty thousand dollars to marry a foreigner so that he could get
his green card. “Three years,” he said, pleading with me, “twenty thousand
dollars.” I had dreams of marrying for love so I told him no.
Now a decade later, I thought I wasn’t any different.
Apparently, however, desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures. I
like my nonconventional life, but I also like to eat. And money, that cursed
thing, is what keeps me away from claiming the starving in the proverbial starving artist label.
Avoiding what might be inevitable (e.g. getting a real job),
I answer an ad looking for female test subjects to participate in an altitude
sickness study through the University of Oregon only days after I arrive to the
state. I’ve lived at high altitude, I know what thin oxygen feels like, and for
all that test studies can be this sounds safe and easy. Also, it’s a five
session study that pays out $190 and that seems fair enough. If anything, it’s
more money than I make sitting on the back patio watching the hummingbirds fuss
at each other over the rights to drink from the salvia. I go in for the
orientation. Then a week later I go back to the lab to have my heart and lungs
tested to see if I fit the study requirements.
The good news is that, as the tech tells me, “You have a
good heart!” and my lungs are in great shape, too. “You can’t get them any
better,” the tech says impressed with the results from the breathing tests, “but
if you wanted to make them worse you could start smoking.” The good news is
that I get paid $30 to be told this. The good news is I qualify to participate
in the study. The bad news is that since I’ve recently been at a high altitude
I have to wait three weeks to acclimate to the test study specs and while that
time is expiring the study is completed without me.
The good news is that there are other studies.
The bad news is they use drugs to create reactions in the
body in order to predict whatever these studies are trying to predict. Over the
past five years in my quest for health I’ve gone to both great lengths and extreme
measures to avoid drugs. The lists of harmful side effects and the long-term
potential for damage to treat symptoms without dealing with underlying cause seemed
like no fair trade for health achieved through good nutrition, time, and a
healthy lifestyle. It still doesn’t. But at times, like now, good health seems
like the Holy Grail that’s never in the place where it was promised to be. I
just can’t find it. I start to contemplate the short term benefits of
conventional drugs and wonder how I can get hold of them without doctor visits
and needless exams. But this also requires money. So I revisit all the methods (ten-day
cleanses, green smoothies, exercise, deep breathing, anti-inflammatory diets,
heat and cold therapy, turmeric) I’ve learned over the years to calm down my
overactive immune system with little to no results.
Meanwhile, summer spins away and with it, dollar by dollar,
goes my ever-dwindling wad of cash. The summer which had once seemed endless
and full of possibility is about over and I’m not sure what I have to show for
it. I don’t hear from the U of O study people. I don’t hear from any of the
agents I’ve queried about my two current writing projects. I don’t get any
response for a creative writing course I offer to the local community. Each day
I wake up with the same burning pain and the growing stress of a future I can’t
seem to predict much less plan for. Some filthy lucre would come in awfully
useful right about now.
I go so far as to apply for three jobs.
There’s zero response there either. I begin to feel
unqualified, too old, undesirable, invisible.
So when I get the call saying there’s a slot just opened up
and can I come two days from now to be a lab rat I agree without reservation.
“You can think about it and call me back,” John tells me.
“No, I’ll be there,” I reply. Then almost as an afterthought
I ask, “How much does this study pay?”
“One hundred sixty dollars,” he says.
Drugs or no drugs two weeks’ worth of eating money for one
day at the lab is good incentive. You’re
a hypocrite, I tell myself. All the anti-drug protests I’ve made over the
years are rendered null by this grasping for cash. I might not sell my soul for
money, but I’ll sell my body. I can’t deny what’s true. I’ll worry about the
effects after the fact.
The day of I get up at 5:30 AM and I'm at the lab before
6:30. “Thanks for getting here so early,” John says, giving me a scrub top to
wear. While we wait for the cardiologist to arrive John puts IV needles in both
my arms and gives me the rundown for the day. I ask him what the study is
trying to predict and he tells me and I promptly forget. It has to do with
heart shunts and elevated heart rates. I think it's for the greater good.
The cardiologist arrives and tests the blood flow into both
my hands with a pressure and release evaluation using nothing more than the
force of his fingers. Satisfied that a tap into one artery won't cut off blood
flow to my hand he gives me a numbing injection and then inserts a wire into
the thumbside artery of my left wrist. Over this he slides a catheter which
will be used to draw blood, flush a saline solution and also to pass air
bubbles safely through my veins into my heart which they'll evaluate on screen
and catalog on paper. He sticks around long enough to make sure there are no
ill effects and then goes on his way.
And then, John has me snort some lidocaine so that he can
pass a tube through my nostril and down my throat to monitor temperature or
something. “It'll feel like you have something to swallow,” he tells me as I'm
following instructions and sipping water to get the tube down. He feeds the
tube and I swallow sip after uncomfortable sip. “It should be about in the
right place.” Suddenly, I choke, cough. “Sorry,” I wheeze, my voice raspy
around the tube. I can't seem to breathe correctly. I try not to choke again. I
try to keep from coughing. This tube is horribly unpleasant. The long day ahead
of me begins to feel onerous. John brings over a machine and hooks it to the
end of the tube watching some levels rise and fall.
“What did you do, John,” the third student whose name might
also be John asks, “stick it in her airway?”
“It shouldn’t move with your breath,” John tells me. “We’re
going to take this out, okay?”
I’m all for that.
After I’ve had a chance to recover, to drink some water, and
breathe without impediment John asks, “Are you willing to try it again?”
This time it goes in the right spot, an uncomfortable
rubbing spot, a day-long frog in the throat.
Next, Julia, the same girl who'd given me the original
orientation for the altitude study, slaps electrode pads all over me. Then she and
John get me hooked up to an IV. “You've probably never been more connected than
you are now,” she says.
When Randy the sonogram technician arrives I get situated in
the chair and John and Julia began to attach all the wires, connect all the
tubes, evaluate the starting numbers and levels. And then they fit me for a mouthpiece
through which I'll be breathing oxygen or room temp air depending on which part
of the study we’re on. They plug up my nose. I never have been so connected before.
The hours roll by and I work to keep my breathing steady no
matter what my heart is doing. I try not to think about the restless ache in my
legs. I swallow around the tube in my throat. And as I lay on my left side for
hours and hours with a sonogram wand and its cold gel pressed to the skin over
my heart I wonder if this is the most uncomfortable way I've ever earned money.
It's certainly the most invasive.
John coaches and encourages me through the full day of
testing. At one point Julia says to the other John, “She’s really good,” when I’m
breathing in time to a metronome. Eight and a half hours later when we’re finally
all done and I’m walking after John to start and get the tubes and needles
taken out Randy says, “What a trooper!”
Having the throat tube out is a blessed relief. Then go the
IV needles.
When the catheter comes out John sits in front of me holding
pressure to my wrist for a full fifteen minutes. And then I have to sit another
fifteen with ice on it. And when that time is up Julia wraps me from forearm to
wrist and tells me not to get the scabbing arterial hole wet for forty-eight hours.
“It might seem a bit overkill,” John had said, “but better safe than sorry.”
They cut me a check before I leave. And as I walk out with
my money in hand I feel like there should be a moral to the day--something I
could say against nonconsensual human testing-- some indictment against the
horrors inflicted on the Jews during World War II (I've just finished a book
recounting some of the atrocities) and against the ill treatment of people of
all races and religions whose humanity has been overlooked and used--something
I could speak to against the horrors of animal testing, but I don't know how, I
don’t know what words to say since I was just in it for the money.
