An hour of my time, a vial of my blood

Shortly before Christ-mas, I took a morning off work so a nurse could come by the house and torment me. She was a very nice nurse, wearing light-blue scrubs, and she got lost along the way and had to call from her pickup truck twice to get directions. (you gotta love a nurse who drives a pickup.)

Her visit was connected with the Sister Study, which some of you might remember I am taking part in. (The Sister Study is an American study of 50,000 women who have a sister who has had breast cancer. We are being tracked for 10 years.)

It was a busy visit, with all kinds of things to collect, some of which I was supposed to have collected in advance, but of course I had forgotten. For instance, I had to swab the tops of three different doorways in the house with pre-moistened cloths, to collect samples of our household dust. I'd forgotten, but fortunately I hadn't dusted the tops of my doorways in, oh, 13 years, so there was plenty of dirt to spare.

And I was supposed to fast all night, but I forgot about that, too, and had a cup of coffee, with my usual 1/4 cup of cream. I hope that didn't throw any calculations way off.

The nurse weighed me three times (yikes) and measured me in all kinds of directions, three times each, for accuracy.

An hour or so later, she left my house with two vials of my pee, six swabs of household dust, two packages of toenail clippings, six vials of blood, and top-secret information on my weight, my height, and the size of my butt. (Oh, OK, I'll tell you my height. I'm 5' 2-1/2".)

I told all this to my friend Joe, who responded in an e-mail: That exam sounds like the contents of some bizarre version of "twelve days of christmas": "Four bags of clippings, three vials of pee, two swabs of house dust, and the cirCUM-frence o-of my ASS...."

The nurse visit was one of three parts to the study. The other two parts were hour-long phone interviews. The first was right after Thanksgiving; the second was the Sunday before New Year's.

The interviews made me feel very healthy, and very lucky, and also very glad that my job wasn't asking people the interview questions over the phone, because that would be a very tedious job. The questions are long and detailed, and the questioners have to read them in full, each time, even when they are asking a series of questions in which only one element changes.

If you interrupt them to help them cut to the chase, they politely tell you that they must read each question in full, and you sit back, chagrined.

They ask things like this:

Did you ever, from the time you were ten years old until the time you were eighteen years old, live within one-quarter mile of a dry-cleaning facility?

And, say you answer, "No, I have never lived anywhere near a dry-cleaning facility." They will write down "No," and then continue to plow through all of the other questions in the sequence.

Did you ever, from the time you were ten years old until the time you were eighteen years old, live within one half-mile of a dry-cleaning facility?

Did you ever, from the time you were ten years old until the time you were eighteen years old, live within three-quarters of a mile of a dry-cleaning facility?

Did you ever, from the time you were ten years old until the time you were eighteen years old, live within one mile of a dry-cleaning facility?

There is a reason these interviews take an hour.

Still, it's interesting to hear the questions and draw some conclusions about what they're looking at. They ask lots of questions about chemicals: the use of cosmetics, and hair coloring--either coloring your own, or coloring someone else's--and about growing up near dry cleaning facilities and oil refineries and farms.

I don't know what good my answers will be; I answered "no" to almost every-thing, from do I wear makeup to do I suffer from diabetes to did I ever live within a quarter-mile of a tannery. I felt like I must be the most boring participant they could have found.

But hopefully, with the help of 49,999 other women who are willing to save their toenail clippings, offer up some blood, reveal their weight, and answer a few questions, they'll eventually be that much closer to finding out a cause for this disease -- and then, hopefully, a cure.

You've seen her before, but here she is again, the reason for my interest in the study: My big sister, Kristin. I miss her every day.