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 ;)