Finish line in sight

Woospie, it’s been a while since I last posted… But can you blame me?! It’s been such a hectic week! Yesterday we had to inject the mice, and boy was I nervous! My hands were all sweaty and my heart was racing, almost as fast as the little mouse. But our supervisor was really nice, and he helped me with the injection. We had to inject 0.2 ml saline intra-peritoneal and 0.2ml subcutaneous. Unfortunately, the subcutaneous injection was a little too close to my finger. He said if you did it right you could feel the needle passing your finger, but I actually pricked my thumb. Nothing serious though, but now I know how the mouse felt. Afterwards I was so relieved! A burden of my shoulders! Funnily enough, the fixation of the mouse went amazingly good, the best I’ve ever done! But I was sooo scared to hurt her (it was a female), so the supervisor guided my hand (although looking back he didn’t really do anything, he just held my hand while I held the syringe). Looking back I don’t know why I made such a fuss about it, but I think it’s just the idea that you’re putting a syringe is something so tiny and vulnerable. I felt the same when I did my first venipuncture, its some kind of mental barrier you have to cross. Next we had to practice stitching on a bike tire (us Dutchies use those things for everything), which was a welcome distraction before the final hurdle: oral administration or oral gavage of water in a rat with a feeding needle. This proved to be harder than I initially expected. We’ve practiced fixating a rat before, but the mere sight of the feeding needle made them very VERY mobile. In the end we let the supervisor hold the rat, whilst we carefully placed the feeding needle in the esophagus. The trick is to wait until the rat swallows as a reflex, which almost pulls the feeding past the larynx. As a closing act, we had to practice venipuncture on a plastic rat model. Which was of course useful, but nothing compared to the real deal. Unfortunately, after all the practical work was done, I had to stay late to work on the research proposal presentation with my other three group mates. In the end I got home at 8.30! I was completely broken! Luckily, one of the girls was kind enough to do the presentation today, cause I don’t think I could have handled it. But she did an excellent job, and we were able to answer and/or refute (most) of the questions asked by the group. Now the only thing that’s keeping me from passing this course is the exam tomorrow. Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had the time to study, at all! I keep hearing from all the lecturers that the exam isn’t all that hard, but I really have my doubts… Especially for the statistical part. So I’m going to stop typing now, and start learning for the exam. I’ll let you know how it went!

With love,

Willemijn

p.s. For all the Dutchies, a funny Loesje ;)

Actual Lab rats

I started the course "Laboratory Animal Science" on Monday, and boy has it been a rollercoaster! We started off with a lot of lectures, about why we use lab animals, how we should use them, and of course the three Rs: Replace, Reduce and Refine. We also got two assignments, one about reviewing an article published in the 90ies (old school LD50 test are so cruel!) and one about writing a research proposal including animal models. But today came the real challenge: animal handling. Luckily, these animals were kept at the research facility for educational purposes alone, so they are used to humans, but we still had two biting incidents (not me!). The rat and hamster were pretty ok, they're big and got a lot of loose skin, so they are easy to grab. The guinea pigs just squealed a lot, the smart buggers learned most people put them down if they make a lot of noice. But the mice were a whole other story. Damn they're fast! It took my quite some time to get a good hold on them, so they wouldn't wiggle free. We also had very good supervision, so I can honestly say that no animals were harmed during this lesson (only humans!). But I am a bit nervous about the injections we have to practice next week... It’s one thing to pick the animal up, but I do feel a bit hesitant about sticking a needle in its belly. That’s one mental hurdle I hope I’ll be taking next week…

Victory day!

Today I got the results from my sequence samples I did (again) yesterday, and guess what: they were great! :D No, not just great, they were awesome! Fantastic! Super! Me and the other lab girls did a little victory dance to celebrate, which gave us some funny looks from the more senior lab people (come people, lighten up! science is fun!), but we rocked it anyway! Another victory came at 2 o’clock, when I passed my venipuncture exam! I was so happy, the most beautiful perfect veins past my needle that afternoon. Especially when you consider that most people who come to the clinic are over 50, and ideally you want males under 30. I nearly crapped myself when I read one of the women’s birth date (1937!), but she had the most perfect pulsating vein I had ever seen! Her blood just gushed out! Never knew blood could make me so happy. Unfortunately, my supervisor also had some bad news. Since I’ll be starting a course next Monday, and won’t be able to do lab work for another two weeks, he decided to ask my lab supervisor to finish my project. This really bummed me out, but my lab supervisor promised he would screw up some results so I wouldn’t look bad. He’s such a funny guy, I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

With love,

Willemijn

V-day?

Today my worst nightmare came true: I thought I was finally done with my lab project, just a simple sequencing step and done, but noooooooo, karma has it in for me. I don’t know why, but she keeps messing up my lab results. We need a serious conversation to sort this problem out, because this project is taking me over two months, which could have been done in weeks. But seriously, I felt like crying when I saw the forward and reverse sequence. None of them matched! How is that even possible?! 10 out of 48 is one of the worst results I've ever had. To make things worse, my project supervisor showed up out of nowhere (surprise, heart attack!), asking me how I was doing. Luckily, he understood my agony, and we've now called it "project headache". So instead of doing a second run, I did my first 48 samples AGAIN, which resulted in me being home at 7 (in a blizzard). God, I'm tired... Luckily, Grimm is on again, along with some horrible Valentine's day movies. I hate Valentine’s day. I feel its invented by people who are in a relationship to shove in your face that a) they have the perfect relationship b) you don’t have a relationship and c) that if you ever will have a relationship, it will never be as perfect as theirs. As a single, I hate having to explain why I’m single. Why is it so hard to believe that I’d rather be alone than date the other stupid 50% of the population? Seriously, I have yet to find a man who can top the relationship I have with my friends, pets, or chocolate for that matter. And to top things of, I've got my venipuncture exam tomorrow, hooray! Oh please karma, just let me pass the exam, I promise I'll be nicer from now on! I promise I won’t shop for a month (oh dear, don’t make a promise you can’t keep)!

With love,

Willemijn

Patience

Pffff, this week may have started slow (Monday was kinda dull) but it has really kicked off now! Today I started my first ever sequence attempt, so fingers crossed for the result tomorrow! XD I really really really hope the result will be good, otherwise I will have to purify all the PCR products, which will take another week... or more... Especially since my supervisor subtly told me he kinda sorta wanted the result.....soon! *sigh* The pressure of being a lab rat, I guess. To give some much needed distraction (and as a present for getting my tooth pulled) I went shopping on ebay this weekend, and found this amazing rotary watch! I placed a bid, so now it’s just a long hard wait before the auction ends on Sunday. I'm such an impatient person, so this should be a good test ;) The person who said "patience is a virtue" clearly never participated in an online auction.

Oh, one last comment though! Did you hear?! The pope is quitting his job! O.o Heard the funniest comment: "He quit at 86? So there is still hope for Charles!" heheh... made my day! :D

 

Dentist horror

Part I - Before pain
Do you know that dreadful feeling, where you're moving too fast and heading towards an object of pain but there is nothing you can do about it to stop or avoid the object? It's how I feel right now. In one hour I will have to walk into the dentist office and he will take his machines of terror and tear out my wisdom tooth (and fill two holes). And I'm counting every second. I've put on an extra layer of deodorant and perfume to (hopefully) mask the smell of intense fear. Why do we even have wisdom teeth?! Its just some cruel twist of nature to give you an extra set of teeth that are very likely to cause pain and misery! He said he could do it in 15 minutes, so I'm counting on him to break his personal record.

But the whole event does put things in perspective, I'm now not half as scared as I was before for my venipuncture exam next week. Hurting others seems so less scary now... Whatever you do, always make sure you're not on the receiving end!

Part II - After pain
Sweet dear baby Jesus (and I'm not even religious)! Holy mother f* crap! That was one of the most scary things I've ever been through. First the shots, which taste awful by the way, and then the drilling. I nearly wet myself! While he was filling the two holes I just kept praying he would forget about the wisdom tooth. He was such a sweetheart though, tried to make me feel better by talking about the weather (it was snowing), when all I wanted to do was punch him in the face and make a mad dash for the door. And then I made the mistake of opening my eyes to see what he was doing, while he had this industrial type pliers in his hand, ready trip me of my tooth and my dignity. Which took a lot of force by the way, he nearly catapulted my out of the chair! I'm just thanking God (again, not religious, but it’s amazing how these things change when faced with panic and terror) it’s over now, and mom for the cup of tea and painkillers. She's also making some soup for me, I'm such a spoiled little brat :)

All in all, I think I'll live, but maybe I shouldn't postpone going to the dentist for two years...

With love,

Willemijn

Lab rat victory dance

Drum rolls please: today I finally finished PCRing my 192 samples! Woohoo! This (seemingly) simple task of selecting, collecting and PCRing took me nearly two months, so a little victory dance is in order. However, this leaves me with only one week to genotype the whole lot before my next course (laboratory animal science) starts.... which is an impossible task! For me at least, the lab rat noob :P

Luckily, my newly favourite series "Grimm" is on tonight with two episodes to give some much needed stress relieve. Somehow a little murder, conspiracy and detective work always seems to brighten my day... ;)

With love,

Willemijn

Monumental start of "Everyday life of a Dutch girl"

To all whom may (ever) read this:

"Everyday life of a Dutch girl" is about the simple life of a simple Dutch girl. Here I will share with you my work (unemployed), love life (if there ever was one), friends (yes I do have friends!), family and everyday stuff that may or may not bother me. So please be prepared for posts about random thoughts/sarcasms, photo’s, shopping sprees (I am a girl after all) and occasional study related frustrations.

And of course leave a comment if you really can’t help yourself ;)