(This article appeared in the 4/5/04 joke issue)College junior Steve Rogers may never be the same again. Last Friday, he went to Penn's Student Health Services office expecting a routine checkup and flu shot, but he ended up receiving a yet unknown substance for the vaccination.
Rogers arrived early for his 9 a.m. appointment, but he had to fill out "numerous forms" before having to "give my Social Security number at least 10 times" and wait for "something like 45 minutes."
Rogers had scheduled this appointment because he had been in Costa Rica over spring break, and he was worried about possible contraction of the flu.
In the vaccination room, Rogers said that nothing particularly unusual occurred, other than the nurse having trouble administering the shot because she was new to the job and the vaccine seeming slightly darker than expected.
After receiving the vaccination, Rogers said that the nurse seemed "very agitated and upset." She immediately left and called her supervisor, who declared that Rogers could not leave SHS at that time.
According to the nurse, Wanda Maximoff, the flu vaccine may have been mistaken for a sample given to the SHS by an unnamed "principal investigator" from the Abramson Cancer Center. The sample, said the nurse, is thought to have been a blood sample from a genetically enhanced lab rat.
Although officials in the University Health System refuse to comment on the incident, Maximoff said that samples like this are usually sent to SHS for simple tests on hemoglobin and T-cell content. SHS is responsible for these samples because, according to Maximoff, "we have nothing better to do."
When asked if he has felt any physical changes or other alterations since the incident, Rogers responded that he had noticed that his teeth are growing very fast. He also has "a sudden indescribable desire to roam the streets of Philadelphia in search of fermented dairy products."
Undergraduate Assembly Chairman and College senior Jason Levy vowed not to sleep until incidents like this no longer occur.
