Flu Camp - Stage 1

So I heard about Flu Camp on a local radio station, its basically a clinical trial testing new treatments for the common cold virus and participants receive up to £3700 for completing a trial. I though this sounded like a great way to help find new treatments plus receive quite a lot of money in doing so.

So I went online, and signed up filling in the usual name, address, contact, email stuff you get on every bog standard sign up site. Once I done that I forgot about it and got on with my day to day life, until I was at the gym and got a phone call from a lady who worked for flu camp, and asked me 101 different questions about my health, history and lifestyle, she then gave me an appointment to come into the clinic in Manchester to have a blood test and told me I would be compensated for my time, I though whats not to lose, I give blood and get £20, brilliant.

So I went down to the clinic which was actually fairly close to my university so I didn't have to walk far, I went in and was told by the receptionist to sign in and till out a form on the ipads they had available then to take a seat and wait to be called in.

I was joined in the waiting area by on other student and we were both called together to fill out a consent form and to show our IDs, once we had filled out the required forms we were sent into a room with about 20 seats and a tv screen and were asked to watch a short video about who the company were and what there aims we, what they have done and what they are planning to do and what our role as volunteers entailed. After the video which was about 10 minutes we were brought into separate rooms and I was then interviewed by a lady, well when I say interview it was really me just answering yes or no to a list of questions she had about my heath and if I had any problems etc.

So once that was done I was brought into another room which resembled a typical doctors office, I was then asked to sit on the bed and it was then when she took a small sample of blood from my arm, I am not squeamish so this didn't bother me, after this I was free to go, so she walked me to the exit where I signed out and left the building.

This leads me up to now, the blood test was a couple of days ago and I was told it will take a few weeks for my results to come back and to see if I am eligible for any trials they have available. I will keep you updated on my progress through this little journey, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading,
Rachel Ward