You're putting what in my where???

The life of a human subject researcher, or any researcher for that matter, is far from glamorous. Our hours are ridiculous, our pay is relatively awful, and our social lives are non existent (ok, that last point is almost certainly because of my own social ineptitude). But what human research lacks in glory, man does it make up for it in coolness. Working with humans is one of the most fascinating and difficult things to do in research. Unlike with animals, consent is mandatory and humans whine about a lot of things. People can simply just not show up to their scheduled times, complain that something is too uncomfortable, or just drop out of the study without any justification as to why. What most people don't realize is what happens before the actual study gets up and going is that human researchers need to do pilot work; that is we need to practice (mostly on each other) before we actually start. Being in a relatively invasive lab and one of the very few people that fits in to the "young healthy" category, I've recently been asked to be a pilot subject in multiple studies now, and because I'm not a smart man, I've accepted all of those requests. Below is a chronicle of what I've been through so far.

1. Femoral arterial and venous catheterizations
This study is being run by a 5th year ph.d. student in my lab, and was by far the most dangerous and uncomfortable study I've done in Utah to date. I can't list specifics of what he was doing, but the testing procedure involved me coming in and getting catheters placed in my femoral artery and vein. I was laying down so I couldn't see what was going on, and I was "numbed" up with lidocaine, but the when the actual placement of the catheter went in.... oh god did that hurt. I was talking to a co worker as the doc was going in and my voice uncontrollably cracked as I felt the catheter pop in to the vein. Pain radiated at the spot. Sharp, agonizing, transient pain. I thought I'd get some more lidocaine; everyone saw how I was doing after the first placement and we still had to go in to the artery. Without enough time to really settle back down, I felt the second "pop" in to the artery, which equally as painful. Overall this was a really bad experience. I tried to shrug off how bad it actually hurt, but I think everyone knew how bad the placement went for me. The pain really did settle down within a few minutes at the most, although I had a nice bruise the size of my palm around the insertion site for about 3 weeks. The testing itself involved knee extension with some local drugs on board, none of which I felt the effects of. It wasn't too bad, but I don't want to do this again for a while.

The two catheters were placed fairly high up, and were held in place by stitches (the blue wire in the middle)

Image taken via ultrasound of the catheter (thin strip) in the artery (surrounding black vessel). The catheter is about 8 inches long

2. Exercise to exhaustion with a spinal block
Now this was an experience. Again, I can't really say the details of why the study is being done, but this was part of a study that my crew does, and therefore what I put subjects through. I received a procedure known as a spinal tap, where an anesthesiologist administered some numbing medication, went in to my spine with an incredibly long needle (specifically the area that has the cerebrospinal fluid) and injected a drug that blocks the pain receptors in the areas beneath where it was administered. As the drug was being pushed in I felt absolutely no pain, but man did it feel weird. It felt like someone was pressing his thumb on the inside of my spine... a feeling that words obviously cannot due justice. Immediately after some measurements were made, I was asked to perform maximal exercise on a bike while receiving multiple types of electrical stimulations, which felt and looked sort of like this. The feeling of max exercise without the burn in your legs is the most surreal, indescribable feeling you can imagine... I knew my heart was pounding and I was burning out, but my legs told me I had more to give. They felt like a combination of liquid heavy metal but at the same time as light as a feather.  I got off the bike after I couldn't push any longer to put my foot down expecting it to support my weight. Nope. My legs completely gave out, but thankfully my professor was there to catch me.  I was toast although again my legs didn't feel like they worked that hard. The next day my back was a little sore from the insertion sight, but overall it was a pretty fun experience and I'd definitely do it again.

3. Muscle sympathetic nervous activity (MSNA).
This was, by far, the least invasive of the three studies so far, but still rather painful. For MSNA, two electrodes are needed; one in to the skin and one in to the popliteal nerve (somewhere around the side of the knee cap). These needles are VERY small, similar to acupuncture sticks. The skin one went in great, hardly felt a thing. The nerve one... welllll... not so great. A post doc in my lab needed to practice placing the MSNA electrode, which turns out to not be the easiest thing to do. At first it felt like a tiny shot being placed on the side of my leg, nothing really noticeable. After 30 minutes of trying to find the electrode, it began to get rather annoying. After 1 hour, it was downright uncomfortable. Like little shots of pain would jolt down my leg. My nerve was becoming more and more distraught, and I was starting to get pain all the way down in my foot. The guys never actually did get the electrode in the nerve; after an hour they usually call it and try again for another day. We're redoing the protocol this week.

Not sure what's next, but my goal is to do everything at least once so I know what all of our subjects are going through when they complete our protocols