Comedy Corner Underground

From November 1st through the 10th I participated in an inpatient clinical drug trial.  I lived with a group of fellow subjects in a dormitory that’s connected to a research clinic in downtown Minneapolis.  What follows are a few selected anecdotes (unedited) from my time as a test subject.

*****

Day 1
Checked in this morning.  I‘ve been here for 3 hours and already I’m having disturbing hallucinations brought on by caffeine withdrawal.  Rehab is hard.*

On the last day of the study I will undergo a bronchoscopy.  A pulmonologist will insert a tube into my nose and thread it down into my lungs.  The doctor will spray some fluid into my lungs then suck it back up to measure how much dope is hanging out in there.  I have spent the past two weeks before entering the study convincing myself that this is nothing to worry about.

I had to poop in a bag.  Not, like, a handbag or a grocery bag- more like a sturdy Ziploc.  A lot more could be said on the topic of pooping in a bag but perhaps I should move on?  Pooping in a bag is such an indelicate topic and I’d hate to be thought gauche.**

There are two other young men sharing a room with me.  I got a top bunk.  I’m counting that as a win.

Memories of summer camp come flooding back on the first night as I softly weep myself to sleep.

*I’m obviously not actually in rehab, but that’s what I’ve told all my friends.  It’s just so much sexier than doing a clinical drug trial for extra cash.
**When I don’t have caffeine for more than 2 hours I become gaucher and gaucher.

Day 2
Everything about this place makes me want to take a nap.  Every few hours the nurses take a couple cc’s of my lush, delicious O-positive and every time I’m immediately ready to curl up with my nook and blankie.

I’m worried that if I say the name of the drug company sponsoring this research they will send hitmen after me like I’m Tom Cruise in The Firm or some other such thriller story.  I need a cup of coffee, bad.  When it comes to evading hitmen sent by evil pharma jerks I think I have well above-average skills.  However, if I’m uncaffeinated, those hitmen will have a distinct advantage, maybe even enough to succeed in silencing me forever*.  Well played evil pharma jerks.  Well played.

MaxoBithSlime** really doesn’t want me to make any babies while I’m on their drug (they’ll come out radioactive and malformed apparently).  Part of the agreement I signed states that I will use no fewer than three forms of birth control while I’m rollin’ on their experimental anti-biotic.  Three forms!  The thing is, abstinence only counts as one form of birth control (I asked!).  Which means that even if I were not knockin’ boots while on their drug I’m technically obligated to take additional measures to avoid impregnating anybody.  Even if I wore a condom on my flaccid penis at all times I would still only be using two forms of birth control.  In order to be fully compliant with their rules I would need to take the further precaution of occasionally squirting a dollop of spermicidal foam down my pants.  MaxoBithSlime is like the opposite of the Catholic Church.

*If you’re reading this blog post, they probably didn’t succeed at silencing me forever.  Take that Tom Cruise!
**This is a made up name!  Take that hitmen!

Day 3
What you do is, you just squat down, hold the open Ziploc bag up against your cheeks and let ‘er rip.  It’s pretty straight-forward.

Day 4
How ironic is it to pretend to go to rehab in order to make money to buy drugs?  Pretty ironic.

Day 5
What does any of this have to do with the Comedy Corner Underground?  Everything!  And nothing.  While it’s true that I’ve never pooped in a bag at the CCUG (though I can’t speak for Pat Susmilch on that one) I have expelled lots of other effluvia down there.  Lots.

Is coming to rehab just my way of getting away from news of the European debt crisis?  (Will the PIIGS ever get their shit together?  The drama is riveting!)  If so, then my escaping skills are in dire need of a spit shine (hitmen take note!) because there are TV’s with cable in every room.  And there’s Wi-Fi.  I know waaaaay more about Herman Cain than I would have if I’d never come here.  Goddamn you CNN.

I miss my friends and family, but I’ve only not seen them for a few days.  But I go a few days without seeing people all the time.  It’s a part of the depressive personality that sent me to rehab in the first place!  I guess we can’t escape our demons, eh?  We also can’t escape our Damons.  I saw a commercial for the Talented Mr. Ripley 5 hours ago and I’m still shaken up by it.  What a shitty actor.  

Wearing scrub tops all day makes me feel like the laziest doctor ever.  If I was really a doctor right now I would be like “SOMEBODY GET ME A CUP OF COFFEE STAT OR I’M GONNA EUTHANIZE THE WHOLE GODDAMN RENAL WARD!!!!!”  Then I would throw my stethoscope at the wall.

Jane Lynch is getting overexposed.

Day 6
You’re gonna want to seal the Ziploc as soon as possible after you’re done.

Day 7
My brain is turning to mush.  I misspelled “they’re” in a public forum.  I wrote “their”.*  It’s time to face the ugly truth that I am becoming everything that I hate.  Intellectually lazy, slothful, and my fingernails need trimming.

Today is a big clinical day.  That means lots of measuring my heart’s rhythms.  Boring!  The most I have to look forward to is one of the nurses accidentally brushing her hand against my junk while she’s taking some blood.  I still need coffee.

I want to sire a radioactive, malformed heir with my radioactive, malformed druggy sperms just so I can be guaranteed one person in the world more pathetic than me.  And because I’m lonely.

At night we get a snack.  There are few things in the world more dehumanizing than being coerced into lining up for Snackwell’s and juice.

*If I have a cat who forgets how to spell “their” I put that cat down.

Day 8
I’ve grown more comfortable at the sight of my own blood.  Needles no longer freak me out.  The subjects all wear IV locks in our wrists that make drawing blood much faster.  The locks are wrapped in cotton gauze and it’s not unusual for some subjects to have locks inserted in both wrists at one time.  The overall effect is to make us all look like we failed at a suicide attempt.

For what it’s worth I haven’t grown that comfortable at the sight of my blood.  If I was gonna “off” myself I would go gun all the way.  Guns are fast, effective, and constitutional.  Plus, if you get shot while buying a suicide gun?  Give that arms dealer a bonus, he just saved you some wet work!

Day 9
I woke up at 4:30 this morning thinking about how the French get a raw deal in modern American discourse.  The stereotype is that they’re a bunch of sissies.  But in the French Revolution they lopped off heads!  Here we are, stuck in the (Not So) Great Depression, and we can’t find one bureaucrat or congressperson to indict?  Americans are the real sissies.

Then I giggle about pooping in a bag and fall back asleep.

Day 10
Tooday thay stik toobs in my nose!  I gott watter borded thay gave mee dollers!  

******

And so ends the journal of my time participating in a process that will inevitably save thousands of lives over the coming decades.  Am I a hero?  I’ll leave that to my biographers to determine.  But, yes.  I am.