Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Being a Gunea Pig

Chicago does not have a diabetes meetup group; costs money to maintain so it disbanded weeks after it last formed. But every month or so meetup sends me an email with the profiles of whoever has signed up as being interested in a meetup group. This month, one of the interested was an ad for a diabetes research project. I'm pretty sure that that's against meetup's terms of service, but what the hey, I called them this morning. Here's what they say the project is:

-they want people over the age of 18 (hey, I'm almost 19)
-who currently test their blood sugar and are willing to test at least 3 times a day (yump)
-who understand English (yeps)
-who can read normal sized print (this will make sense if you keep reading)
-who can get to their facilities
-who are willing to come in three times for an hour each, to any of their nationwide research places (the nearest to me is in Schaumberg, and it will take me two and a half hours by public transportation to get there)
-not currently in any interfering research studies (I told the lady about the other diabetes study I'm currently in, didn't tell her about a different research study I'm also in)

in exchange, research participants are given one meter at the first session, with test strips. They are supposed to use that meter (I don't know when or how much; I'm not actually in the study yet) for 36 days, at which point they go back in to the clinic, turn in the equiptment (the woman on the phone said equiptment), and get a different meter with strips. Repeat and come back for another session (and presumably a survey).
Then I get a check for 200$. So, I get at least 100 dollars worth of test strips, plus I get 200 dollars, plus I get to try out new meters. Could this get sweeter? Not by a whole lot. The getting to try new meters will be the best part, I hope. I asked, to make sure, if they provide the test strips, and she said yes.

I've turned in my diabetes art project. I intend to work on it some more. Blogger is having a problem uploading my image. The error message says that they're aware of the problem and working to fix it, so I guess I'll try again later.

2 comments:

Bad Decision Maker said...

hey i would love for that meetup to still happen! we don't need the stupid $$ costing meet-up group... i think i still have the emails of other people and we can post it on tu diabetes or soemthing

eu said...

I work at dLife and I was wondering if you would like to be added to our diabetes blogger email list? Every week we send a fun video clip about diabetes. If you are interested, please contact me at urbahn at dlife dot com. Thanks!