“Ohhh yes, this beautiful… you must go to Turkey,” Moroccan Zach was telling us stories of his travels throughout the world.

“Oh yeah man, Turkey’s real nice.” Tony, who was a spitting image of Andre Agassi jumped in.

“I want to go to Japan; not to a city but the backcountry,” Team Xtreme Jim added.

“Well if you guys wanna go to Asia, you gotta go to Thailand.  It’s dirt cheap. $3,000 will last you six months over there,” Tony said.  He was a wealth of traveling knowledge. He had been all over the world and was planning to make his way into Africa to experience living within a tribal community.  Tony had come from the west coast and was going to be doing medical studies all summer to finance his next round of travels.

“Ok guys, I need to talk with you for a couple minutes” I looked up from to see an older woman with an olive complexion who I couldn’t tell if she was truly attractive or I had just been in labrat facilities and it was throwing off my hotness meter.

“My name is Vanessa and I am your study manager.”

She spent 10 minutes with us thoroughly explaining the details of the study.  As it turned out, it was a unique study. First off, there were three points in the study at which we could be removed.  The study was using an anti-coagulant called “Plavix” which was already FDA approved and in use on the open market. In Lehman’s terms, Plavix causes you to bleed more.  The (course of this study) included a “biopsy”(removal of your skin). It’s important to note that biopsies are NOT a common occurrence in studies. This is the first time I have had one, let alone four, but there’s a reason the study pays almost $3,000 for 5 nights and one follow-up visit – especially at “the warehouse” aka MDS which is one of the lower-paying facilities.  Now, of course, I was slightly nervous about whether or not my body would have enough of a response to Plavix. It was like a bad prank such as jokes on jokesfan.com/bad-jokes.html that I’ve already read once.  I found However, the great thing about the study was that as long as you passed the first biopsy, you were guaranteed $900 ($500 for the biopsy, $150 for each night in the facility and $100 for the follow-up). Not bad for a weekend’s worth of work especially when all participants had passed the first biopsy except for one.

The three points where we could be removed were 1) after the first biopsy, 2) on day 3 when our blood work would come back from the lab and 3) after the second biopsy.

The first biopsy was scheduled to take place following our meeting with Vanessa.  This would determine our “baseline bleed time” or how long it takes for the biopsy wound to stop bleeding.  If this time is greater than 25 minutes than we would be eliminated from the study. On the third day, when our blood work would return from the lab, our bleed time would have to be at least 30% greater than our baseline level or theoretically, it would be at least 30% longer than the baseline time established from the first biopsy.  If we made it that far, the next target was the second biopsy. If bleeding time did not actually increase by at least 30% after taking Plavix the day before, then you would be excluded.

“Ok guys, the order of the study goes by number.  Who’s number 55?” Vanessa asked.

“I am,” Johnny Ramones answered with a nervous grin on his face.

“Go get ‘em tiger.” Moroccan Zach said with a big smile on his face.

The rest of us sat around talking and trying to keep our minds off of the impending doom of having a chunk of skin removed from our bodies.

Johnny Ramones came back to our table about twenty minutes later holding his butt and pretending feining pain.

“C’mon my friend, too much of this faking.” You had to love Moroccan Zach’s accent and speech rhythm as he called Johnny’s bluff.

“Thee guys from thee uhhh other group ahhh told us there’s no pain.”

Johnny laughed as he sat down and taunted Moroccan Zach to go for his biopsy.

I was up next and despite what Johnny was saying, I was getting a little nervous.  I made my way to the main lobby and made small talk with Xtreme Jim while half-watching a cooking show with a smooth black man preparing some serious soul food on the big screen.  Moroccan Zach had left for his biopsy at 9:30 am and it was now 10:30 am. Something was up. All previous nervousness that Johnny helped ease was quickly returning. I took my gaze off the TV as a nurse approached.

“STW, you can come with me,” she said as I got up and followed her like a good, obedient lab rat.

As we approached the biopsy room, the door opened and Moroccan Zach came out with his trademark smile plastered across his face.

“Dude, what’d they do to you in there!?” I asked, visibly nervous.

“Zee Doctor took two pieces, he hit the nerve on zee first,” he said with that genuine goofy smile still plastered on his face. Despite his laidback zen attitude. I was even more nervous as I walked into the room.  Upon entering, the doctor and nurse turned around to greet me. To my horror, they were both wearing what looked to be butchers’ uniforms! I wanted to turn around and run screaming. Unlike the traditional medical scrubs that I was expecting, they wore full smocks that covered the front of their bodies from chests to just above the ankles.  To complete the uniform, they wore white gloves, head wraps and face masks. It was a butcher uniform but with the scrubs blue coloration.

I couldn’t help picturing the gruesome visual from The Sopranos when Tony and Christopher cut up Ralphie’s body before they unloaded the remnants into a bowling bag.

“Is there something going on here you’re not telling me about?” I asked straight-faced to the two hospital butchers.

“Ummm, no, I don’t think so” the foreign doctor replied.

“You two look more like butchers than doctors!” I exclaimed with a forced smile.

As I started to ready myself to oby their next command, they both laughed.

“Ok, now, take off your pants,” the nurse said through the laughter.

“You’re a very forward nurse… I like it.”

She continued to laugh as I made my way to the bed and laid down on my stomach in only my boxers.

“Ok.  I am first ehh going to shave zee area” the doctor said as he rolled my boxer briefs up my left buttocks.  As most males do, I have some hair on my ass and upper hamstring…Was it necessary to share this??? Ha!

“You know, you can lay your head down on the pillow and relax,” the nurse said in attempts to calm me down.

“Sorry, I get tense sometimes with the situation I don’t feel like I have any control of” I chuckled as I moved my arms from a perched position to my sides and laid my head on the pillow.

“You will actually bleed more if you are tense.  Is not good,” the doctor added.

I glanced to my left and so the doctor filling a long needle with lidocaine to numb the area.

“Ok, you will feel slight pain like a mesquite bite, then burning.”

Never in all my drug study experiences did I feel more like a human lab rat than at the moment when the needle entered my ass check.  Growing up in a Maine Coastal town, in a homeless than a mile from the coastal river marshland, gave me a lot of the first-hand experience with mosquito bites.  The sensation from the needle entering my ass did not bring back memories of warm summer days of being eaten alive by blood-sucking insects while playing in the neighbors’ backyard.  This was MUCH worse.

After withdrawing the needle, the doctor waited five minutes for the lidocaine to remove sensation from the area.  I expected my ass to feel numb in the way that novocaine works on the gums before a dental procedure. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel anything at all thanks to the lack of nerve endings in the ass.

I looked at the doctor as he reached into a box and pulled out an instrument that resembled a pencil.  The piece of skin that he would be carding from me would be the size of an eraser. As the doctor moves behind me, I struggled not to look.  I tried to find “Buddha” (my Zen-like state) but the Sopranos visual kept flashing before me.

A minute later, the doctor was standing near my side.

“That’s it?”

“Dat is it, my friend.”

“Now we have to test your bleeding time,” the nurse added.

This is done by using a round piece of absorbent paper to mark the points that are written on the paper with blood… my blood… creepy, I know.  Fortunately, I stopped bleeding after about five minutes.

“Sweet, I passed round one of MDS survivor.”

They both chuckled then the doctor started to stitch me up.  Surprisingly, this was the worst part of the entire procedure.  You might think that having a chunk of skin removed from your body, followed by being bled out for five minutes would be worse but to me, it wasn’t.  My mom did a lot of sewing when I was a kid so I kept visualizing the needle and the thread slicing through my skin. Five minutes later, I was sewn up and putting my pants back on.  To think, if I was selected, I would get to enjoy three more ass chunk removal procedures!