I had the first day of the study I signed up for today. It meant going in earlier than I really like to, playing Pokemon Go as I went (reinstalled as a birthday gift to a friend, for reasons).
I came a little too close to walking in from of Simon's car when playing Pokemon while crossing the street beside his work (actually, can't have been as bad as it seemed to me as he didn't even notice me as anything more than regular human driving-obstacle).
At the set of lights after that I bumped into one of the few of Shitlord's friends who I had socialised with enough to talk to but not to feel I am still allowed to talk to. So that was a bit awkward.
I got to the Mellor Labs - which is what the old Chem building is now called - slightly late and was still Pokemon Go-ing and that led to me falling on the stairs inside the building the breaking my good headphones (the hand-me-down ones Simon gave me a few years back). So I was heading in to over six hours of mostly waiting in a lab without my planned entertainment. And some bruised pride.
Then they started with blood tests, which took two tried and ended up coming from the vein on the back of my hand - which is painful one. Then introduced me to the machine I had to breath in every half hour for the day - which was pretty straight forward, I even understood most of what was going on. Puffing into a fancy mass spec. And the blood glucose readings started. So many of them.
And I had to drink the glucose drink. It means I got the worst one out of the way first. It was so unpleasant.
I had failed to find a volunteer to be my control, because too many of my friends are grown ups. When I first signed up for the stupid I was considering asking Shitlord and sorting it for on days he had off. So we could hang out and get paid for it. But things went sideways between us before I could seriously pass on the suggestion. And, realistically, even if he had agreed he wouldn't have turned up...
Less than an hour into to my surfing Facebook and generally being grumbly the Johnny's boy running the study went up to his office and came back with some loner headphones. From which point onward I filled the time between puffing into a machine and being bled by watching the Ba Sing Se episodes of Avatar off Netflix. Wasn't sure I could watch Big Mouth in mixed company.
For lunch I had to have a second glucose drink.
In spite of the large amount of disgusting glucose, the fact I had had my metformin with a dubious meal substitute rather than food meant that by mid afternoon I had gone slight hypoglycaemic. 3.6mmol/L. I didn't think I could get that low, nothing from the student I did with the metre in my arm seemed to have been below 4.4. I say that and went and checked and saw it got to 3.8mmol/L twice and on one of those then got to 3.7mmol/L. It seems I spent almost 2% on the time I was on that study last year being slightly hypo. So maybe it wasn't just the meds without food.
Maybe it was the fact I am mixing meds that aren't supposed to be but which all doctors told me I was stupid for caring about, because it is never actually an issue. But metformin isn't supposed to cause hypos.
At the end of the session the Johnny's boy running it took me to the staff cafe for some sushi he'd bought on campus - as he had forgotten to get in the catering order for the post study meals. And we had a long chat about things nothing to do with the study. Was nice to have a surprisingly deep conversation that involved basically nothing personal. I guess that is how people make new friends (not that that is what was happening, friendly acquaintances maybe). I am very out of habit at talking to new people.
Woot, blog entry that might be more about my shitty health than my shitty love life......
The hypos lead to some texting that they shouldn't have. Telling Shitlord that I am disappointed in how bad a person he is....
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