Jock's Jocks

Pardon for the delay, but I've felt that before I did the latest guinea-pig update I should have a think about what I could take away from my three nights away; three nights confined big-brother style in essentially three rooms, a corridor and a bathroom.

From the outset, I have to say that I actually had fun. Seeing as though we only took one tablet for the duration, it was easy to forget why we were there in the first place. The thing that really interested me over my stay is how males interact when thrown together in a group.

I made some friends pretty early on, and I had a couple of loosely banded groups to choose from. There was the more sporty group who bowled tennis balls to each other in the hallway, and they were generally pretty cool but nice. The second group was the slightly nerdier group with all the usual geeky wisecracks and so forth. I gravitated toward the latter.

I guess no hospital scenario is complete without the obligatory hard ass nurse. Ours came in the form of an attractive middle aged woman. She seemed really nice; that was until I was waiting in my bed one morning for her to extract crimson from my arm and she stood at the foot of my bed and asked:

"So did you break your legs last night?"

To be honest I had no idea how to respond to that, as I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I thought maybe she was commenting on the way my legs were bent in my almost too small bed. I didn't feel that was the most interesting observation in the world but alas no, she wasn't talking about my bent legs, but the fact that I hadn't got up to put some rubbish from the night before in the bin. My first thought was that she was a cow. However I realised the hard ass nurse syndrome is but just another way that nurses stay sane while they're working. Other nurses have a really quirky sense of humour, but the hard ass nurses' humour was just dark.

Three nights spent somewhere under one's own free will led to a feeling of claustrophobia. We persuaded a nurse to take us all to the local park. I can see why people in jail love their hours exercise everyday. Freedom was sweet while it lasted.

Apparently using oneself as a clinical triallist is really big in Europe. In England, some trials involve a full day of screening where the number of hopeful applicants exceeds the actual number of places in the trial. Therefore it is not unlike try-outs for a team where being looked over means to feelings of despondency and disappointment.

One interesting thing to note is the fact that we are not being paid for the risks associated with trialling these prototype drugs, but rather our time. We get paid by the hour, which is interesting as not being paid for the risks is something that the research co-ordinators made extremely clear to us at right from the outset.