Weird Science

When I started this experiment, I said I was going to try anything and everything I could to lose the weight by non-surgical means. Since then of course, I've proved myself a wimpy wuss-ass - I ducked out of the Speed idea, as it didn't seem like the best of plans for someone dabbling in tachycardia. I've not done the 'wrap yourself in plastic and sit in the shed' idea, as made famous by The Full Monty. I've not done colonic irrigation, although at very many points, the Xenical Effect made it feel as though I'd done precisely that. So, all in all, I've 'not-done' a lot more than I've actually done in terms of the weird, the whacky, and the downright demented.

Ahem...

I clicked on a Facebook advert a couple of days ago.
"Are you male, healthy, not dead, not especially decrepit and fat?" it asked. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.
I clicked it, because I pretty much qualified (shut it, you lot!).
It was an advert for a clinical trial.

Clinical trials are looming large in my life right now, cos my dad is hoping to get on one come the Autumn, to help improve his bloody-mindedly miserable physical condition. My own physical condition has very much stopped being bloody-mindedly miserable, which is, as I've wittered on about endlessly, one of the main reason why my weight hasn't shifted in the last month. But now there's the opportunity for me to get on a clinical trial. I read the details, filled in my own, and twanged off an email.

They came back to me today with more details, and more questions. The more questions were all fine...except possibly one. If you have a history of 'unexplained urinary tract bleeding' it said, you may not be elligible. I've had a bit of a brush with unexplained bleeding. I went through a manner of modern torture to try and get it explained, but the best anyone could tell me was that, at the time, I had a kink(!). Since I've begun losing the weight, incidentally, the kink appears to have magically straightened itself out, cos there's been no bleeding....pretty much since the benighted afternoon in which the horrifying words "We're gonna need the wide-bore and the spreader" first entered my life. So - I don't know - I may be inelligible for this trial. I guess we'll see in the days to come. Days, rahter than weeks, as the trials are all taking place at a major London hospital in May, with follow-ups in June.

The follow-ups, apparently, involve wearing a kind of electrode-cap to monitor pulses from your brain.

Did I mention, the trial is of an appetite suppressant? Now - appetite suppressant and electrode cap, I can kind of see - the neurology of appetite and all that. What I can't really make the leap to is part of the treatment itself.

Appetite supressant. Keep that fact firmly (as it were) in your mind when I tell you that the trial itself also involves the use of something called a Rigiscan.

Err...yes, the clue is in the first half of that word.

The Rigiscan...apparently...consists of two rings. Two rings that must be  dropped like quoits over the shaft of the penis at various points along the trial, and which measure - Christ, I wish I was making this up - any change in girth along the way.

The questions are almost endless. Where exactly are they hoping you'll lose weight from in this experiment? Where's the logic in testing an appetite suppressant and measuring dick-thickness? Are you supposed to be so hungry you wear yourself down to a nubbin out of sheer frustration? I think the biggest question-mark surrounds the supplementary information though. The Rigiscan, I was assured, was "a non-painful" - note - not pain-free! - "measuring device, and you will be instructed in how to use it...."

Really? What's it gonna be, doctors lining up, me stood there with my trousers round my ankles and a target painted over my nether regions, as they try to toss the scanner on the Tony? Or worse, will there be some cringe-worthy moment of Proper Grown-Up We Can Talk About This Frankly You Know, This Is Proper Science discussion about how precisely to fit the rings of the girthometer around one's shaft? Doesn't bear thinking about, all in all...

Except it rather does, because a) I've done very little that's genuinely weird on this trip so far, b) if it works, it'll allow me to get on without having cravings and eating anything like as much as I do, and b) they pay. Real money. And quite a few good handfuls of it, to boot. For those three things, I can be Grown-Up as all get-out while measuring the thickness of what bad Victorian erotica would undoubtedly have called my 'Maleness'.

Hell, every boy in my class at school was obsessed with measuring himself - it was all down to the Adrian Mole books (about a teenager with, among other things, like acne and intellectual pretensions, an obsession with measuring the length of his penis. He was the Harry Potter of our day, with a very definite wand-fixation. Thanks a lot, Sue Townsend, for making us think that was normal behaviour!). I'm not about to describe to you either the length or indeed the girth of mine (that'll be one stat that's between me, d and science, if I'm selected for this bizarre experiment in humiliation). And as I say, my general kinkiness may yet rule me out of consideration for the trial. But if not - if I do end up on this thing...I'll be re-thinking that whole semi-noble 'leaving my body to science' thing when I die.

I think they'll have had their fun at my expense by then!