Ebola, Part 1

Left super early so as to try and beat the morning rush hour traffic around the DC beltway. Am personally offended by all the poltroons doing the same thing. How is it possible that there is a back up at 6:45am?

Followed instructions, and found myself stuck at the entrance in a long line of vehicles being searched (!) by rent-a-cop security guards. They did have a real live policeman (who looked exactly like Lee Van Cleef, very scary) walking around all the commercial vehicles with a sniffing dog. I guess the National Institutes of Health are a high enough profile target to merit the security. A bored lady had me roll down my window, and waved a wand with a wad of some kind of paper on the end at my steering wheel (I suppose that any bomb residue would stick to my hands, and then the wheel?) and then she had me pop the trunk and waved it in there, too. I felt safer, a little, driving in.

The place is HUGE! I tentatively made my way through the campus-like setting, peering for directional signs in the growing dawn. Hey, cool, they have valet parking! I wonder if that’s just making nice for the human guinea pigs, or if it’s a further security measure?

I go to admitting, and have my first snack encounter while waiting. Apples, muffins, juice, milk, and coffee are available in the admitting area. I grab an apple for the ride home (wrapped neatly in a protective foamy thing) and an orange juice. They call my name, and I forget my unopened orange juice. D’oh!Upstairs, I meet the nice nurse who is doing the intake interview. While waiting, I had my second snack encounter. A fridge is kept stocked with juice, and a small basket is filled with graham and townhouse crackers for the Vaccine Center volunteers. Juice again, which I drank this time. Nurse explained how important it was to them that the patient is enthusiastic about completing the study, since, as a volunteer, I can fish on them at any time and ruin all the invested work they put into it. I assured her I was excited to participate. She further explained that today I would be giving blood samples to be tested for a variety of factors, any of which might exclude me from being able to participate in the study.

As an FDA monitored vaccine study, they have to continually demonstrate no harm is coming to the patient; their duty is to first protect the participants from harm, second to pursue the vaccine study. If I have any disposition towards testing outside the standards set by the FDA as “safe” then I will be precluded from participation in the study; I might (due to my native disposition) test outside the safety zone on something, in which case the FDA would pull the plug on the whole study.

So downstairs I go to phlebotomy. Hey, it’s right next to the admission area, my juice is still there! It’s unopened, so I go ahead and live dangerously, drinking it while waiting in line to fill some blood vials. The nice phlebotomist tells me all about her grandbabies while filling at least twenty of the little vials.

Back upstairs for a base-line physical. Dang, I need to lose some weight. Nurse shook my hand, said thanks for participating, and I have an appointment to go back for appointment zero in two weeks (if I pass the blood screen). It will be at appointment zero I get the first of three administrations of the trial vaccine (there is a 2 in 7 chance I will get the placebo).