Not for the squeamish

You've been warned!

I never really have had a squeamish bone in my body. I gave myself injections starting in 8th grade. I've seen the insides of all kinds of things but these days...well, let's just say, the more disgusting, the better.

Friday I got all inked up. Let's just say, it's a pretty large space. As of Monday it started getting itchy. Of course, I have to share this with Michael, who does actually get a little nauseous when I start talking about the Faith jerky flaking off all over the house. Sorry honey!

The really gross stuff started when I started working in the HIV industry. My office mates were always talking about their rashes and diarrhea. I was teaching groups of volunteers how to comfortably talk about fisting on the Hotline. It was all fun and games I tell ya.

Anyway, on Tuesday, I made an unannounced visit to my old lab group. They happened to be in the middle of a video conference call. I was invited in for a peek.

My old group does research on rectal microbicides. The leader of this group, Dr. A, is an incredibly sweet, very attractive and charismatic man. Patients get crushes on Dr. A, while he is looking up their asses with a flashlight. That is how cute he is.

One night about 6 years ago I was at a fundraising dinner with Dr. A. He was presenting to donors about his latest research. He had a slide show. I hadn't seen the slide show before he presented it. It started out just fine. There were data. Charts. Dot plots. Bullet pointed goals for the research. Then there was the slide of a normal vs. a diseased colon. During dinner.

Now, this would not phase a group of researchers at all but these weren't researchers.

I swear to god I heard gagging.

There are other people in this world that don't want to look inside another person's ass while they are chewing on their chicken marsala. This was news to my sweet Dr. A. I love this man. I made him promise to never show colonoscopy slides during dinner ever again. Under any circumstances.

So Tuesday, I happened to pop in during a conference call. The latest research seemed to be going well and so they were talking about moving up to a Phase II trial. Phase I trials are exclusively safety and so they are always done in so-called normal participants. For instance, if you have an HIV drug, you give a small dose to "healthy" non-HIV infected volunteers first to see what it does to them. If there aren't any hideous side effects or adverse events, you can usually go on to dosing trials and trials where it is used in the population it was intended for. Blah blah blah blah blah blah.

This trial was for a rectal microbicide so it was being used in people who weren't regularly using their rectum for sex but they were moving into Phase II trials where it would be used in frequent douchers.

Can I tell you how much I miss my old group. I miss talking about frequent douchers. I miss talking about the difference between gloopy and drippy. It's true.

It may be wrong, but it's true.