Scenic Route

After you get settled in at the sleep lab and before they wire you up, they check vitals, (110/80, 54bpm, 97.1°F, 162 lbs, 5’-9½”), breathalyzer (0.00) and urine drug screen. I knew this.

I tested positive for stimulants.

WTF?

You know I’m clean and I know I’m clean. I’m 5 years and 31 weeks sober, I don’t drink caffeine, I’m on no medication whatsover and I really do take care of myself. Hell, taking care of myself is the whole reason I signed-up for this study. I could give a rat’s ass about their study goals and the papers they’ll publish. In fact, screw the money. If asked, I’d pay them. No, I’m in this for me.

So what’s the problem?

Intellectually I know it’s a false-positive in a cheap, instant screening test. Emotionally? I was devastated. And we all know emotions rule over intellect.

I’m not sure someone who isn’t in recovery can truly relate.

I’d be able to deal with it intellectually if they’d told me the test revealed I’m pregnant. Being pregnant is just as not possible for me as taking drugs. Emotionally, however, I think it would have been easier to take, “Not only are you HIV positive, but your viral load is off the scale and we couldn’t find a single T-cell.” I think.

I’m not minimizing the emotions poz people felt when they first learned. I’m saying that there’s a protocol for that in order to protect people’s emotions. They don’t just blurt it out to you over the phone. I’m saying that addiction for me has the same deadly potential as HIV. And I live only in daily remission with the statistical odds of relapse stacked firmly against me. It’s serious stuff.

Guilt, shame, blame, suspicion of what people are thinking about me, (J’accuse!) fear that they’ll kick me out of the program, and the questions. Who would fuck with my pee and why? Who will believe me when I say the test is wrong? What will my sponsor say? Or Mark? Or my sponsees? Or friends? Will I have to give back all my AA coins? Will my home group take away my position as Treasurer? Will they turn their backs on me?

With the one statement, made to me over the phone in the lab by the RN associated with the program, completely erased from my head everything I’ve worked so hard for. Mess doesn’t come close to how I felt.

I just couldn’t react. The RN started asking me things like, “Why do you think that is? What could have caused this?” And so on. All I heard though, was “J’accuse!”

“Low-grade, poor-quality, cheap ass, mutherfucking test” never came to mind. Everything was defensive. And stupid. “Someone spiked my souvlaki at lunch?”

All night the squirrels ran back and forth between completely flabbergasted, to absolutely livid, to “poor me” and to “must seek vindication.” Busy were the squirrels. Until at least 5:00AM.

This morning, I think they began to see the upheaval it caused. Although I stressed to the morning techs that I wasn’t blaming, only venting, but that if I didn’t vent, it would be dangerous for me. Well, they took it defensively. In retrospect I understand. How could they not?

Still, they were—sorry, lack of sleep has stolen my vocabulary. The word I’m looking for I think starts with a P, and means insincere in response, like when you tell a kid who’s just broken his leg you’ll kiss it make it better. Yeah. That could help. Please.

My message started getting through when when I insisted on another test before leaving, and strongly suggested that it be done with an alternative kit. I asked for the manufacturer, model and lot number of the test from last night. I asked for the name of the lab they use for confirmation testing. And I asked for the Yellow Pages.

Then I sat down at a conferance table and started calling drug testing companies. (A full screen for the DOT, like bus drivers and truckers take, is only $60 for urine and $100 for hair. Written results in 24 hours for urine, one week for hair. Cash only, please. In advance.) Perhaps it was when one of the techs overheard me saying into the phone, “I need to refute a false-positive test for stimulants. Can I come in right now?”

I was on my fourth call when an administrative-looking man came in, shut the door and said, “We need to talk.” I finished the call and prepared to listen.

He broke the ice by starting, “I’m in recovery myself, so I think I might know how you’re feeling.”

Okay. This I’m willing to listen to.

He made apologies, explained he’s not invovled with the particular study I’m enrolled in, and went on, “First, you should never have been told the results of the test. You could have been told something went wrong with it and that we’d have to do it again. You could have been told any number of things. But you should not have been told the result.

“Second, the result was ‘inconclusive’, not ‘positive’.

“Third, your result from this morning’s sample was negative. That’s the one we’ll use.

“Fourth, if you still want to get an outside verification, bring us the bill and we’ll pay for it.

“Finally, if you want nothing else ever to do with us again, I’ll understand.”

We must have talked for 20 minutes after that. At one point he seemed so defensive I had to talk him back down.

A phone call late this morning brought the end result of this part of the story—oh yes, there’s much, much more. After a meeting and review of the polysomnography logs, they’re not going to throw out last night’s sleep test with last night’s urine test and have me do a third night so that they still have two. I’m not going to a third-party for a refutation test. And I’m going back tonight.

Maybe I’ll actually get some sleep.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 1:36 pm EST and is filed under Generic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.