Helping Humanity
Last week I joined a clinic research study at Vanderbilt. The study is to determine the effects of a new diabetic medication on blood pressure when taken in combination with a particular blood pressure medication. My participation involves taking the "study drug" for 4 days, eating a normal sodium diet for three of those four days and then going in for a 10 hour study at the clinic. The food for the normal sodium diet is provided as part of the study. The RN said the purpose in providing the food to study participants to make sure that our sodium is in the normal range for the in-clinic study day.
Today I went for a glucose tolerance test. I had to drink this nasty nasty beverage that pretty much made me sick for the rest of the day. About 20 minutes into the test, I 'dumped' the sugar, meaning I broke out into a sweat, had heart palpitations, and some shaking because my body was having problems processing the sugar due to my bypass. That pretty much weirded the hell out of the RN who did not know what dumping was and had never seen anyone react like this. Thankfully, the study Dr (who is a diabetic specialist) was there. My blood sugar jumped to over 450 but settled back down to 140 by the end of the two hour test. Hours after I left, I still felt sick to my stomach. I am not sure I have ever spiked that high other than may be at Jill's wedding when I ate cake and drank two glasses of wine. That was truly an OMG experience.
This afternoon I took a three hour practice exam for the CAPM exam. I missed 26 questions out of 150 on the practice exam which is passing. I now feel much better about taking the real exam on Friday but I do plan to re-read some material and go over all the formulas. On a side note, I bought a study guide just to see sample questions from the exam. As I read through the book, I found that some of the material referenced in the book was not included. When the book said that there was a special focus section on how to determine the critical path - I was thrilled. I was less thrilled when I realized that the special section was not in the book. It was the same situation with the communication process formulas. So today I called the publisher and talked one of the contributing authors. He was very nice and thanked me for alerting them to the omissions. He said that he will email me the missing information in time for the test. Hopefully that means I will get it tomorrow. The upside of all this concentrated studying is that I feel prepped for starting class next week. :-)
Today I went for a glucose tolerance test. I had to drink this nasty nasty beverage that pretty much made me sick for the rest of the day. About 20 minutes into the test, I 'dumped' the sugar, meaning I broke out into a sweat, had heart palpitations, and some shaking because my body was having problems processing the sugar due to my bypass. That pretty much weirded the hell out of the RN who did not know what dumping was and had never seen anyone react like this. Thankfully, the study Dr (who is a diabetic specialist) was there. My blood sugar jumped to over 450 but settled back down to 140 by the end of the two hour test. Hours after I left, I still felt sick to my stomach. I am not sure I have ever spiked that high other than may be at Jill's wedding when I ate cake and drank two glasses of wine. That was truly an OMG experience.
This afternoon I took a three hour practice exam for the CAPM exam. I missed 26 questions out of 150 on the practice exam which is passing. I now feel much better about taking the real exam on Friday but I do plan to re-read some material and go over all the formulas. On a side note, I bought a study guide just to see sample questions from the exam. As I read through the book, I found that some of the material referenced in the book was not included. When the book said that there was a special focus section on how to determine the critical path - I was thrilled. I was less thrilled when I realized that the special section was not in the book. It was the same situation with the communication process formulas. So today I called the publisher and talked one of the contributing authors. He was very nice and thanked me for alerting them to the omissions. He said that he will email me the missing information in time for the test. Hopefully that means I will get it tomorrow. The upside of all this concentrated studying is that I feel prepped for starting class next week. :-)