"So Here's the Deal"

It's not as scary as it first sounded. Here's how it works. First they do some fancy x-ray after having injected you with a radioisotope called Tecnesium Perthecnetate 99. This is to establish a baseline of your current saliva production. Then over a period of approximately 3 months, on 3 separate occassions they take your blood (45 mls) put it into some voodoo machine and then re-inject it immediately into 3 spots into your Parotid gland through the skin. The Parotid gland is the largest of the saliva glands and is situated at the side of your jaw. To give you a reference it is the gland that swells when you get the mumps. Then twice more, at 5 and 6 months they repeat the x-ray thing and hopefully find improvement.

The tricky thing about the whoile deal is that once established the schedule is pretty well non-negotiable. They want to study 20 people overall but they need to be processed in batches of 5 because of the cost and availabilty of the isotope, and also something to do with "batching" the tests. Again it is related to costs as I understand.

Claudette and I both agree that we want to participate and yet I made it clear that I could only do it if I could work it around my travel schedule, including our Penticton trip. So as a first step I am sending them my schedule and then we will go from there. I expressed my wish to wait until after Ironman and she seemed to think that may be a possibility. It will all depend on the availability of the isotope and also probably how quickly they can get their other 19 subjects organized. I hope they can wait for me because now that I know more, I definitely want to do it.

The name of the doctor organizing the whole thing, reporting to Dr Yoo, is Mercedes Ceron. She claimed to be a research fellow, but I'm pretty sure she was a woman! I liked her, even if she was a little hard to understand. She's from Columbia and has a strong spanish accent.

We never talked about potato chips but we did talk about the possibilities of success. She suggested that there has been some success with similar procedures on different organs, but of course she was not making any promises. She did express confidence that there would be no risks or complications other than the local discomfort from the needles. Not really a tough decision as long as they can accommodate my schedule. I hope so.

Just 65 kilometers on my bike today and now I'm gonna go do the dreaded weights with that slavemaster Peter!

I wish to dedicate day 271 to my new amiga, Dr Mercedes Ceron.

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward."---Amelia Earhart

“My basic principle is that you don't make decisions because they are easy; you don't make them because they are cheap; you don't make them because they're popular; you make them because they're right."---Theodore Hesburgh

love
peter