Ebola Part 4

>SMACK!<

And that was That. My final injection for this research study. Once every volunteer in all three protocols has received all of their injections, the Vaccine Research Center can “lift the veil of secrecy” and tell us whether we got the placebo or the actual vaccine. I love the image of lifting the veil. I mean, I already feel terribly pompous about the fact that I am involved in this super-dee-dooper exclusive bleeding edge of science study. The fact, that on top of just being able to participate, I get to be on the big reveal, the grand poobah secret? Total gravy.

But the suspense is terrible!

I hope it lasts.

So here I am today for the follow-up blood work. What stretches before me are gradually increasing periods of time between appointments until next December, when the study ends. A month, then two, then three months between visits. I feel like such a hardened veteran. I’m already thinking about which study I’ll sign up for when this one ends. They have a study on a smallpox vaccine, and an HIV vaccine. Both are remunerated. *cough* Do you remember what it was like to get an income tax refund check in the mail? If you still get one, you are probably savvy enough now that you have it direct deposited. But do you remember how you could just tell what it was? That kind of orangey-yellowy colored check you could see through the address window on the envelope? The return address was the IRS? I get compensated with one of those every time I have an appointment. So, so very cool.

But another study would also involve repeated snack cart opportunities, which of course is way much cooler than getting checks from the IRS every couple of weeks. Well, more sporadically, now, that the appointments are going to spread out. *sigh* So now I’m downstairs giving my tenth of a liter of blood for Science.

(ObDexter) SCIENCE!!!!

It’s a time for pondering and reflection. Preferably something besides the bloodletting.

I helped my sister and her husband move this weekend, and during a lull in the hubbub, was teasing my mother, “Mom, I am powerfully grateful for the wonderful things I’ve inherited from you. The blue eyes, the love of language and literature, the tolerance. All wonderful boons.

“I could’ve done without the bum knees, though.”

Being poked and bled for the eleventh time, I recall that conversation, and her chuckling. I will probably need to have my knees re-kneed (heh, alliteration is funny) sometime in the next ten or twenty years. My Mom’s joints. You take the good, you take the bad...

I’ve got good (well, bad, but you know what I mean) odds of having either colon cancer or heart trouble, if my two Grandpas are indicators of my genetic destiny.

And now I’m thinking about my own kids. Three out of five so far have needed braces. Three out of five need glasses (again, so far). All three boys are color blind. Two out of four have periodic asthma.

So many things will happen to them, to their bodies, to their lives, because of me. And not just what I do, but what I am physically. The very fact that they were born, and have grown up healthy thus far is a statistical miracle. Genetic roulette being what it is, though, something will eventually catch up with them. Like it will with me.

The fact that mortality stalks us all makes some people quail at just the thought of doing things. Having a family, taking risks, living, loving. I cannot accept that rationale. I concede the raw practical reality of mortality, that any good thing I do will eventually end. More likely than not as Ozymandias’ empire, in great irony.

But I know that doing anything can make a difference. Even if the difference is just for a while, perhaps one person’s lifetime, or even just one person’s day, that difference matters.

What I am doing (what for all real purposes I have nearly finished doing; only three appointments left now) in this study . . . some days seems trivial. I get up a couple of hours early, listen to the morning NPR news cycle, eat a danish and drink some orange juice, develop an amazing resilience to being creeped out by needles.. But, if this vaccine works, what good will come to the world? Maybe a few thousand people saved from death over the course of the next century; that’s a pretty big deal, isn’t it?

I’m just a little, tiny piece of the program here. If I hadn’t filled the role, someone else would have. But, and I think this is important, I *did* fill the role. And I was only able to do so, because of my relative genetic health. The screening nurse told me today that they had a higher than expected rejection rate for applicants for this study; nearly three out of every four applicants was bounced.

So with my achy knees, has come the ability to serve strangers I will never meet, in a continent I will probably never visit. With everything else, I am grateful to my Mom for that.

My eleventh visit to NIH has ended, and now it’s time for me to go to work