The Lab, the Blood and the Board
Red sails in the sunset
Way out on the sea
Oh, carry my loved one
Home safely to me
—Williams & Kennedy, 1935
Red Cells in the Urine
—Dr. Cooper
Daddy had a way of elevating the humor value of almost anything. When I told him about the exciting new job I had—performing hospital lab tests, including microscopic examination of urine specimens—he literally sang the first line of the 1935 love song, substituting his lyrics for the original.
It was what we now call a "dad joke," which means it would be likely to elicit more groans than laughs. I can't remember which way I responded, but the line stuck in my brain in that compartment where quotes from your father tend to lodge.
I saw the job vacancy posting and filled out the application while I was attending a biology class held at the hospital. It started out as a part time job during my second year in college.
If asked, I would say I was working for "beer money" but I mostly saw working as a lab technician as a fun way to learn hematology and all the other -ologies that are the scientific basis for diagnosis and treatment of diseases in humans. The paychecks were decent and gave me a bit of financial independence from home.
I was taught how to perform tests in every section of the lab because there would be times when working the overnight shift that I would be the only technician on the job. Because this was 1970 many of the tests were performed not by automation but "by hand" using the traditional methods and tools of clinical laboratory testing, including microscopes, test tubes, pipettes, centrifuges and petri dishes.
A few of the tests were complicated, with multiple steps and precise timing. Of these, the most difficult were testing blood for the presence of phenobarbital, which took about an hour of focused attention, and cross-matching blood prior to a transfusion to test for compatibility of the donor with the recipient, which required about 45 minutes.
There were a few simple, one-step tests as well, such as counting the number of platelets on a microscopic slide or dipping a chemically-coated plastic strip into a urine specimen to test for red blood cells, which are not supposed to be there, and will disqualify you from military service if they are.
But hold on a minute. Why was I even thinking about selective service disqualification? Was I ever at risk of being drafted into the army?
No, because in September 1971 I satisfied the draft board in Lynchburg, Va., that I met all the qualifications for Status I-O: Conscientious Objector. They notified me that I would be required to serve two years of alternative service, working in a hospital, for instance.
Having anticipated this, I had previously asked my boss at the lab if I could continue working there. Not only did he grant that request, but volunteered to state this arrangement in the formal letter of recommendation to my draft board he intended to write for me. All that remained was the formality of the physical and mental examinations, the same ones required of all military-service members.
I reasoned with all the wisdom of a 19-year-old boy that I could save myself from two years of indentured servitude if I were to flunk the physical exam.
To explain how I planned to cheat on the Selective Service Physical Examination, we'll need to return to the lab and take a look at "hematocrit"—one of the "by hand" tests we routinely used to assist physicians with diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the blood system, such as anemia. It begins with a sample of the patient's blood, obtained either my drawing a few milliliters of blood from a vein, or poking the patient's finger with a small lance.
In either method, blood is then drawn into a tiny glass tube with an interior width of 1 millimeter and length of 75 mm, or about 3 inches. One end of the tube is sealed with putty, and the tube is spun in a centrifuge for a few minutes. The red blood cells are forced to the bottom of the tube while the clear plasma rises to the top. The relative height of the column of red blood cells, expressed as a percentage of the height of the cells plus plasma is the number reported for the hematocrit test.
So, I had a way of sneaking blood into the test location, but where to hide the little tubes?
In my Heeb-ro (or Jew-fro), of course. Since the beginning of college, I had become accustomed to going months without a haircut, and my curly hair simply piled up on my head.
On the day of the physical, except for the contraband concealed in my hair, I looked just like the rest of the slovenly, terrified inductees in the line outside the rest room where we had been instructed to pee in a cup and to place the specimen on a counter just outside the rest room door.
I had just enough privacy to slip a tube from my hair, and snap it open allowing a couple of drops of blood to fall into my specimen. I placed my cup in the line of cups on the counter and slowly walked on ahead while I waited for the soldier behind the counter to perform the test.
He placed the coated plastic strip into one cup after another, without looking, and marked the result, which he hadn't actually seen, on his clipboard. When he got to mine, it got the same no-look result.
If the soldier had bothered to look he would have seen that the plastic test strip in my cup had turned from gray to black, indicating a highly positive test for blood, invisible to the naked eye, but clearly detected by the test strip's sensitive chemical coating.
I had passed and was at that moment eligible to return to the laboratory, not as a draft-dodging felon, but as a conscientious objector, exempt from military service.
What self-destructive cocktail of impulsivity, naivete, arrogance and chutzpah would a man need to possess, in order to risk a felony conviction for intentionally flunking the physical?
I still don't know except I'm certain it's the same mixture which had fueled my mid- to late adolescence.
*
David Cooper was on the faculties of The University of Maryland and Elon University where he served as professor and Dean of the School of Education.