Yes, so obviously a date was arranged and details sent to me and I attended the GP surgery in [village] in [name of GP] surgery and then I met a, a person there from the renal study group who took all my medical details including weight, blood pressure. Then took several samples of my blood and said that I’ll see you next year [laughs].And so it all went very well.

Then the second year we had a repeat performance; I was contacted at home on the phone and asked, you know, when I would be able to take part in the second part of the programme and we arranged a date and this was done again in [name of GP] with a lady doctor and exactly the same format and also took the samples away for analysation. The outcome of that they sent the information history to my GP, so my next Wellman interview which is every year, it said they’ve got the results and they showed me on the screening one thing and another and everything was sort of very, very good and then laterally, this year, had the third session on research programme; exactly the same procedure. Obviously, I don’t know the outcome of that but I’m sure if there was anything untoward, I’d hear further, so, yeah, it was fairly straight forward.

And then the really, the bigger one, was when we were approached by the team at [city] to get involved with their, I think it’s called [name of study removed], which is looking at the brain, blood samples, answering intelligent questions, basically spending a day with them every six months going through a routine of tests, questions, eye tests, all that sort of thing. And when we went there the first time everything was clearly explained to us and laid out to us and, you know, it’s been great working with the team, because you feel, they make you feel as though you’re part of the team that are researching the issue. You’re not a guinea pig that’s in a, you know, We’re going to put you in a hutch for the day and treat you like someone that, you know, we’re going to come and visit every now and again and put a pin in you and take some bloo and etcetera etcetera. It was, Yeah, you’ll be with us for the day. We’ll have lunch with yo. You know, everything was done nicely, very, very nicely.

Yeah, yeah that’s right I replied saying I wish to volunteer and take part in terms of [biobanking study] I was called to [city venue]. There was a centre there had a very, very thorough-, thorough medical examination, a whole range of, a whole range of different tests for different things.

Okay.

The normal things like blood pressure and heart rate but wider than that as well and that lasted about two or three hours in the first instance. Then after that received just from [biobanking study], received newsletters along with everybody else who’s taking part in research and that was very interesting, absolutely fascinating actually to see the way the [biobanking study] is gathering information and how the information is being used. And I didn’t hear anything for I suppose two or three years I should think and then was asked to go to [city] to their centre there and had an absolutely massive [laughter] massive day of tests, they tested absolutely everything including mental faculties as well, there was different tests on computers.

On memory?

Memory that’s right and reasoning power but, but also on top of that scanned twice in the one day and ultrasound on arteries in the neck but it was extraordinarily comprehensiv.

I think it would have been. It was at [name] school and I went there when I was eight and I think it started there.

Okay.

I can remember being in a room, I think my brother was there as well, my twin brother was there as well, being in a room and somebody, we were, we had some sort of physical examination, I remember that. Weight, height, a few questions, but really that’s all I remember
Okay
nd I’ve never been examined or asked any questions since.

Oh no not at all, sometimes it’s a questionnaire, some occasions it’s a sort of medical check with both physical and cognitive tests and the last test, the last one involved actually going to [university] and it was a day of various tests. So it, it does vary enormously.

Can you tell us a little bit about that day in [university]?

Yes I mean we had various things like sort of blood tests and I think maybe x-rays, it was really, I mean it was a full medical check and also, as I say some cognitive issues, you know, on memory tests etc. It seemed to be pretty comprehensive.

So, was it a sort of group of you went at once or…?

No, it was individually.

Ninety per cent of the time. There was one guy who wasn’t particularly good, and he really hurt me and but the girls are normally excellent. I said, you know, I’m a bit difficult but I don’t mind back of the hand or whatever and so they were quite good about that. I did one in, at the [hospital] and I got the consultant who did the blood and that was ’93 and he went through the vein and the whole of my arm went dark brown right along there and, you know, they said, Oh, you should go to the hospital, you know, should complain about that. And I thought, Well, it’s not worth it. it’s, my experiences of people taking blood is a competence level. If they’re good, you don’t notice. And they say, Oh your blood doesn’t flow very wel. That’s because you don’t have it in the vein correctly because my blood flows like mad.

And one of the, some of the questions at the beginning of the test was- it was quite a comprehensive test lasted about an hour. Some of the, some of the questions were, a couple of odd ones, to test whether I could tell the difference between different animals or repeat different words and remember them. So it was very much, very much linked to see what my level of cognitive ability was at the moment and it was pretty high I have to tell you without being arrogant, it was very high. It was in the top 95% for my age so and I do crosswords every day so I, I like, I try to keep myself my cognitive ability, I try to keep it up.

Yeah, memory in terms of giving me a, a string of words which I can still remember and then asking me to repeat them a few minutes or half an hour later, so sort of words like face, purple, lily, church, velvet.

Okay.

You know, a sequence of words which I had to then repeat back. And they asked me to repeat back then and also half an hour later they asked me to sort of, to take say a number, 94 and subtract eight from it each time until I got back down as far as I could, so that was like a mental arithmetic test.

Yeah, they talked about how do you, they talked about healthy eating, so there was a lot of questions regarding, What do you eat?’ How many meals?’ How many fruit intake is in your diet?’ and then there were question regarding, How do you feel?’ How your moods?’ Are-, are you teary? Are you happy? So vaguely, I don’t remember clearly but I think those were the questions, yeah.

So, they were looking for if a mum is healthy, how does that impact on a baby for baby mental health and growth. If a mum is mentally, having any mental health issues, how will that impact on the weight, on the size of the baby. The food intake as well was in the questionnaires, so what I’m eating and taking in as a diet is affecting my child.

Oh yes, everything, lifestyle because when I did the lifestyle study. In fact, tell you something humorous; What activities, you know, how active are you? I said, Well I have to be, I’m responsible for a four-bedroom detached house and garden which I have to cook and clean and wash and shop. I’ve got a large allotment which one of my wife’s allergies, she, she builds up oxalates in her body, so we have to know if we can where the vegetables come from. So, I became a keen vegetable gardener and have actually won five Banksian medals, which is the RHS Gold award and you can only take part every three years, so fifteen years. And I said, I maintain a large allotment. I also cycle around the village. I’ve got an old bicycle because you have to go the bank, the post office, the doctor’s, library, the shops and it’s much easier to get on your bike than mucking about with a ca. Oh yes, it is a lot to d. Oh, we can’t include housework. We don’t consider that to be an activit. I thought, There is a bloody proforma questionnaire written by a man. And funnily enough it is now considered an activity.

No they’re quite, I think they’re very well constructed. so somebody who’s actually been in the business, you know, you do get questionnaires from different organisations that are frankly just a waste of time because they’re not properly constructed but these are always well constructed.

The flow of the questions and also there’s an obvious, there’s an obvious, I say an obvious answer but if you’re not sure or if, you know, they do seem to cover all eventualities, you know some, some questionnaires that you get you think, Well that’s not appropriate for me, why are they asking it?’ but this, all the questions are always appropriate.

The format’s the same so, you know, there’s always a covering note just checking your address and everything that you’re still living where you’re living. So I think, I think it’s, I think we’ve just got used to it over the past 70 years.

Apart obviously the classic demographic information is more or less the same each time. It covers lots of things like, you know, I think one of the questions is, you know, how you’re, how you’re feeling, are you more confident than you used to be or less confident than you used to be that’s something that I think is probably a bit of a leitmotif something that’s that goes through each time. But as I say you can just tell that they’re interested in a particular aspect or two or three particular issues really each time, and they vary from time to time.

They always come as paper questionnaires, that’s interesting, you know, it’s never been done electronically, maybe they think because of our age that we, you know, that we may be less conversant with electronic techniques I don’t know, I never thought about that.

[Laughter] And you’re happy with the paper version, or would you?

Happy with the paper version. I mean, one could do it electronically but I think somehow the paper version is quite good because you can think more about it, you can sort of reflect and look at the questions in more depth. I know doing other things online you just go through from sort of frame to frame and don’t bother to think, oh maybe I shouldn’t have said that, maybe I didn’t think that way. But with this, you know, you know that if you, if you think, no maybe that wasn’t quite right,’ you can go back and alter it easily.

Then later on I remember doing little tests, little intelligence tests and things. But you, you sort of take that as the norm really, I mean, I think you, well certainly I did as a child sort of took what came. And I don’t remember much though in my teens to be quite honest whether there’s just so much else going on I don’t know, but I imagine I must have made some input and carried on. I remember it more later when I’d become a mother and there seemed to be a lot then, a lot about diet sometimes the questions were quite invasive because you had to acquire a lot of material, you had to keep a record of your diet for two weeks. You had to write down the recipes if you’d made something. You had to include absolutely everything; it was really detailed. As time has gone by, it’s been very clear that the questions are following a certain line of research and for me it’s, it’s quite interesting I, there was a whole section where they were asking about how hot do you drink your drinks, how cold do you drink your drinks and I think that’s leading to something very specific.

But there were papers, there were papers, that you had to read and fill up and I’m sure there were more tests that I can’t remember. And I know in the latter years, you know, I have had people come to the house and had medicals and memory tests was one of the things. Now of course they talk about memory and physical, you know, standing up on chairs and sitting down, all these things. Standing on one, I think you’re, one interviewer mention standing on one leg but that’s another one, especially with your eyes closed which I find is almost impossible now to stand on one leg with your eyes closed [laughter] but there we are, that’s getting old for you.

It sounds like it’s sort of quite fun, not too arduous?

Well it’s perfectly alright and it’s not arduous at all, no it’s not arduous at all. It only takes an hour or so all in, in the scheme of things, that’s nothing is it? [Laughs]

I think they explained that it would be a number of blood tests, a number of urine tests, spaced out over six months and then sort of every 12 months thereafter. So oh yeah and doing blood pressure as well and a couple of times, or at least once anyway they give a blood pressure monitor to have here at home and to do myself which was quite interesting. So it all seemed totally, you know, apart from the blood test non-invasive and very easy to do.

Well, they’re easy enough to wear, there’s absolutely no problem at all. You know, it was, they gave me different patches, so I could have a shower and put a new patch on – re-clip it. But the only time we didn’t wear it, of course, was when I was in the shower.

Okay, so otherwise you

I wore it all the time, sleeping and throughout the day.

Okay, you said that you didn’t get a feedback from that? Are you expecting a feedback from that test?

Not really. I guess if there’s anything peculiar they would have let me know, but I haven’t, had no feedback from that or the wrist monitor.