» Doctors, Nurses, Dentists and Hospitals

Cookie cutter
Last uni holidays, being too lazy to actually get a real job I mostly just sat around, that is until I heard I could earn $3000 for being a medical guineapig! result! Me and five friends got in on this, and it paid for my holiday around Europe. It was a trial to test toxicity of a wound healing drug for use on diabetic ulcers, eye injuries, and other wounds that just won't heal. So to test a wound healing drug, they must of course wound us...

So, first day, they pull out a ridiculously large, thick needle and proceed to inject local anaesthetic in my upper thigh, maybe eight times per leg? (this oddly was the most painful part, because a real doctor had to do it as nurses weren't qualified enough to... inject things? and he only ever did injections on people that were already under general. He would often stick it in and wiggle it around a bit in between squirts deep inside my goddam leg, pumping me so full it created a skin volcano with lava flows of anaesthetic. Fucker!)
Then they came along with a 1mm hole punch thing and took six biopsies per leg in a line, maybe 50mm deep, before applying the drug to the holes.
THEN the big scary cookie cutter thing came out (1cm diameter, 50mm deep), and they biopsied out the first hole. Odd to feel the pressure of this guy pushing this thing into your leg, and then see it slide neatly into you like cookie dough, before they pull it out with tweezers and *snip* *snip* *snip* through your flesh with nail scissors to seperate it (sounded a bit like cutting through steak with kitchen shears). Then they took the little cylinders of my flesh (looking abit like chunks of frankfurter in tomato sauce) and baggied them; presumably for later study in a dimly lit lab already stocked with hundreds of little flesh tubes, by an man with a hunch and facial disfigurements.
He then stitched up the hole in the same cack-handed way, trying out different stitching techniques on us for kicks. Four hours later, the same for the next hole down, then the next two over the following week. They took photos and changed dressings over the next month, during which we couldn't get the wounds wet, so no showers; and we all walked like old men to avoid stretching out our painful stitched up holes.

One year later I have a nice line of circular scars on both upper thighs, its ended by career in swimsuit modelling, but lets be honest that wasn't really getting anywhere anyway by virtue of being skinny and hairy. I still haven't come up with a good story for the scars, a very precisely aligned alligator perhaps?

Apologies for length, would only be about 4 inches if you laid them out in a row.
(Tue 16th Mar 2010, 11:00, More)

» The Worst Journey in the World

My worst
Holidaying in Australia with my gf and friends we are trying to get from Sydney to the Gold Coast. Decide to take the train, seems like a good option, travel agent says its cheaper...

Journey starts at 8:00pm and ends at 4:00. Yes thats 14 hours, but i figure there with my gf, comfy seats cant be all that bad. Find out we bought our tickets too late and train is full so im all by myself at the back of the train and they get upgraded to 'premium' (found out that means they are at front of carriage, so no seat in front thats it).

So im all at the back by myself with an empty seat next to me, shes at the front with an empty seat. Swap? youd think so but no, did it a few times but apparently causing all sorts of admin problems with the one passenger occupying the seat next to me for 3 out of 14 hours ... so nah, get back to your bloody seat and stay there. Read book until lights go out after 2 hours, not allowed to use my reading light because it 'disturbs other passengers'. Ipod out of batteries, laptop dead too. So since i cant sleep on any form of transport i sit there, staring at the wall listening to the crummy squeaky carriage in a crappy seat with no legroom for 14 hours. Get off, get on coach to hotel. In winter at 4:00am 3 hours on the coach with no heating so like an arctic winter, even less legroom!
Get to hotel at 7:30am find room will not be ready until 3:00. So sit outside until then before finding we could have flown for an hour and a half, in the morning, for less money.
Fucksocks.
(Wed 13th Sep 2006, 12:18, More)