The Study, Part 3, The Actual Study . . .
Alrighty then! I did end up hoofing it to the train, but I caught the shuttle from the University stop over to the hospital building where the Clinical Research Center is located. I got there and wound my way through the maze of hallways and elevators. Here is the entrance!
I got in, but no one was there! Then I met Gail, who tried to find out where everyone was. Eventually I met Dr. Worcester, and she told me that a "sitter" would be there and would spend the night in the CRC so that there would be someone there so I wouldn't be alone. I was the only study participant in the CRC. Well, I was the only person there at all! I got settled into my room.
Gail brought me my dinner. I'm sorry I didn't get a photo of it - I was so hungry by then that I dug right in. It was a lot of food - more than the other dinners had been. It was chicken, green beans and plain penne pasta. It wasn't great. But I had mango sorbet for dessert and that rocked! :-D Gail left as soon as she brought me my dinner, but the sitter didn't arrive.
I decided I would go to bed, so I put my jams on and discovered that the bed was super hard. Yikes! AND it was super cold in the room. So I padded out into the hall to look for the sitter to see about getting a blanket . . . cue the scary movie music!
I could have made my own horror movie, don't you think? :-D The sitter never showed up, and I just put my shirt back on over my jams and that was warm enough to get some sleep. Turns out there had been a mixup - the sitter arrived, but the hospital sent her to a different location. So I spent the night alone, but since I was sleeping, it was no big deal.
Morning! I wanted to take a shower before we got started. And you tell me if you would have known how to work this shower:
You push it and the water stays on for a prescribed amount of time. I suppose it's a big money saver, but I mentioned to them that it would have been really helpful if they had instructions :-D
So I was clean and ready to go. I had finished my 24-hour urine collection - it's there on the left, and they brought nine jars and lids. I had to pee every 45 minutes nine times. The first one is there on the ledge - it wasn't a lot. The rest of them were more.
In addition to peeing every 45 minutes, I also had to have my blood pressure taken (Yay Me for great BP!!). . .
. . . and blood drawn every 45 minutes (20 minutes after I peed), so they put an IV in my arm so they wouldn't have to stick me every time.
I had no trouble peeing :-D But by the third blood draw, my vein was not happy and refused to give up the blood. My nurse, Colleen, did everything she could to get it to play nice.
She tried heat packs. . .
No go.
Then she put a warmed blanket on top of the heat packs . . .
And while that felt great, it was still a no go for my vein to give up any more blood. She explained to me that IVs are meant to infuse things in to the body, not be there to take things out, and sometimes veins are just cranky about it.
Because everything is specifically timed in the study, we lost one blood draw due to this issue, but it was OK and didn't mess anything up
On to IV #2. She went for my elbow this time in order to be more certain that it would last for the rest of the study morning. It did! Yay!
Just to be safe, she put two more heat packs on me and she wrapped my entire arm in a heated blanket. It looked like a big burrito :-D But the heat did the trick and my elbow vein gave it up every time for the rest of the study! Yay!
Having to have a new IV did spike my BP up to to 145/63, but it fell back down pretty quickly.
I did a lot of reading last night and this morning - I've been reading the Sandhamn Murders series by Viveca Sten. They are really good (and I just found out they've been made into a series, so I'll turn on the telly for them, for sure!). You can get book details over on the sidebar. I'm on #4 now. The staff at the CRC were surprised that I didn't want the telly on, but I really did not. It was much more enjoyable for me to have time to read and be in silence.
The study so far is a pretty cool experience because some of it happens in real time. People from Dr. Worcester's lab come and get the samples and they start studying them right away!
The study itself is 5 years long! They are in the 3rd year now, and by the time it's over, more than 50 test subjects will have participated in some way. I don't know when/if I will receive information about my personal results, but when/if I do it won't be any time soon. I know I will receive a copy of the study once it's published. That won't be for a few years. My next arm is scheduled for September, and we will be scheduling arms 3 and 4 shortly, as well.
The study itself took longer than I thought it would. I ended up having to take a full day off work. I'll know that for my next three study arms and will plan accordingly. We finished and I'd had lunch by around 2 - the only meal where I didn't have to eat all of it in the past 3 1/2 days :-D (I don't care for cantaloupe - I ate the green melon, though :-) ).
I ended the study with this BP:
Yay Me!!!
And now it's the weekend and this song always takes me back and makes me smile :-) Have a good one!!
I got in, but no one was there! Then I met Gail, who tried to find out where everyone was. Eventually I met Dr. Worcester, and she told me that a "sitter" would be there and would spend the night in the CRC so that there would be someone there so I wouldn't be alone. I was the only study participant in the CRC. Well, I was the only person there at all! I got settled into my room.
Gail brought me my dinner. I'm sorry I didn't get a photo of it - I was so hungry by then that I dug right in. It was a lot of food - more than the other dinners had been. It was chicken, green beans and plain penne pasta. It wasn't great. But I had mango sorbet for dessert and that rocked! :-D Gail left as soon as she brought me my dinner, but the sitter didn't arrive.
I decided I would go to bed, so I put my jams on and discovered that the bed was super hard. Yikes! AND it was super cold in the room. So I padded out into the hall to look for the sitter to see about getting a blanket . . . cue the scary movie music!
I could have made my own horror movie, don't you think? :-D The sitter never showed up, and I just put my shirt back on over my jams and that was warm enough to get some sleep. Turns out there had been a mixup - the sitter arrived, but the hospital sent her to a different location. So I spent the night alone, but since I was sleeping, it was no big deal.
Morning! I wanted to take a shower before we got started. And you tell me if you would have known how to work this shower:
You push it and the water stays on for a prescribed amount of time. I suppose it's a big money saver, but I mentioned to them that it would have been really helpful if they had instructions :-D
So I was clean and ready to go. I had finished my 24-hour urine collection - it's there on the left, and they brought nine jars and lids. I had to pee every 45 minutes nine times. The first one is there on the ledge - it wasn't a lot. The rest of them were more.
In addition to peeing every 45 minutes, I also had to have my blood pressure taken (Yay Me for great BP!!). . .
. . . and blood drawn every 45 minutes (20 minutes after I peed), so they put an IV in my arm so they wouldn't have to stick me every time.
I had no trouble peeing :-D But by the third blood draw, my vein was not happy and refused to give up the blood. My nurse, Colleen, did everything she could to get it to play nice.
She tried heat packs. . .
No go.
Then she put a warmed blanket on top of the heat packs . . .
And while that felt great, it was still a no go for my vein to give up any more blood. She explained to me that IVs are meant to infuse things in to the body, not be there to take things out, and sometimes veins are just cranky about it.
Because everything is specifically timed in the study, we lost one blood draw due to this issue, but it was OK and didn't mess anything up
On to IV #2. She went for my elbow this time in order to be more certain that it would last for the rest of the study morning. It did! Yay!
Just to be safe, she put two more heat packs on me and she wrapped my entire arm in a heated blanket. It looked like a big burrito :-D But the heat did the trick and my elbow vein gave it up every time for the rest of the study! Yay!
Having to have a new IV did spike my BP up to to 145/63, but it fell back down pretty quickly.
I did a lot of reading last night and this morning - I've been reading the Sandhamn Murders series by Viveca Sten. They are really good (and I just found out they've been made into a series, so I'll turn on the telly for them, for sure!). You can get book details over on the sidebar. I'm on #4 now. The staff at the CRC were surprised that I didn't want the telly on, but I really did not. It was much more enjoyable for me to have time to read and be in silence.
The study so far is a pretty cool experience because some of it happens in real time. People from Dr. Worcester's lab come and get the samples and they start studying them right away!
The study itself is 5 years long! They are in the 3rd year now, and by the time it's over, more than 50 test subjects will have participated in some way. I don't know when/if I will receive information about my personal results, but when/if I do it won't be any time soon. I know I will receive a copy of the study once it's published. That won't be for a few years. My next arm is scheduled for September, and we will be scheduling arms 3 and 4 shortly, as well.
The study itself took longer than I thought it would. I ended up having to take a full day off work. I'll know that for my next three study arms and will plan accordingly. We finished and I'd had lunch by around 2 - the only meal where I didn't have to eat all of it in the past 3 1/2 days :-D (I don't care for cantaloupe - I ate the green melon, though :-) ).
I ended the study with this BP:
Yay Me!!!
And now it's the weekend and this song always takes me back and makes me smile :-) Have a good one!!
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