WGBH Radio; Morning Stories; Just Say Yes

If you live around universities you see a lot of ads for human guinea pigs on Cafe bulletin boards. Just being left handed can score you a few bucks from a psychology department. And once I figured out that if I was a left handed dyslexic with a background of heavy cocaine use and 750 in a week among all the studies however one stands out. The sleep study pays thousands. Once when I was between jobs I looked into joining with. A nice young woman on the phone explained that for five weeks I would be living in a research hospital without phone or TV or anything to tell me the time of day. Meanwhile experimenters would use bright lights to shift my circadian rhythms even hinted that in the end they could leave my circadian rhythms any way I wanted them to hear. Pictured leaping out of bed at 6 a.m. a feat I had dreamed of all my life. There are still there were minuses. Getting my blood drawn hourly. Then there was the rectal probe so doctors could monitor my body temperature. The REAL showstoppers though were the vigils on three separate occasions attendants would keep me

awake with games and chit chat for 50 hours in a row. Fifty hours wasn't there something in the Geneva Conventions about that never mind. I wanted no part of it. Good bye sleep study. Then in mid January on the very same day I would have been starting at the hospital. I hurried out to my car and failed to notice a patch of black ice. Down I went. Snap went my ankle on went the cast. Coming up in the next half hour Princess Diana's biographer on her futile search for her as a consequence of my choice to avoid five weeks of confinement. I was now stuck in my third floor apartment for what the doctor predicted would be oh five weeks to live because I had baulked at the vigils. I now had a cast which to me awake every night and because I had tried to spare myself the probe I now had to bounce on my bottom stair after stair day after day. Assuming I wanted my groceries and mail

could I join the sleep study. Desperate I grabbed the phone. Was it too late. I pleaded with the nice young woman politely she explained that while they'd love to have me they needed a common baseline for participants. If I did join now they would have to break everyone's ankle. There were of course other studies she reminded me. Stress Studies diet studies the right course never looked into one. Suppose I did then chose to decline what would happen to me then.