I was really surprised to get a letter from the Mayo Clinic, and even more surprised to see it contained a note thanking me for participating in their clinical trial.
“Well, good for me,” I thought. “When did I do that?”
I didn’t take a dozen tests for the Mayo Clinic like I did for the Fingolimod trial. I didn’t take a day to fill out my medical history and send it to the Mayo Clinic, as I did for the Supernova trial. I didn’t send my spit off for DNA analysis like I did with the NARCOMS trial.
As it turns out, if not my spit, I did indeed send my shit off for DNA analysis, I just forgot it. I sent a Cologuard sample. I had no idea that Cologuard was created with help from the Mayo Clinic, who teamed up with scientists to make the pressure cooker of poop (TM).
The Cologuard poop analysts look for blood in your sample, but they also look at the changes cancer causes in your DNA.
That’s a lot of trouble so I don’t get colon cancer. So I’m quite happy I checked their little check box that said, sure, you can use these, uh, results for a clinical trial.
So now the Mayo Clinc, Cologuard’s patron, is writing to remind me it is time to update my data. Fine by me. Even if this whole colon cancer test is just a scam to get my DNA.