Dissection and Rat Surgery

Today, as usual i woke up around 7.30 a.m. and quickly get myself ready for work. *grin*. Actually cannot consider as going to work also because i was not assigned with any lab work by Prof Viki yet. But my friend, Li fang will be doing dissection and rat surgery today. I am so looking forward to see how she carried out rat surgery in the Anatomy department. But i have doraphobia (fear of the skin or fur of animal)!! I want to get rid of this FEAR as i might need to deal with mice in the future (vaccination-don't know whether through oral/ nasal immunization or inter vascular vaccination). Whenever i think of that, i am extremely terrified but i am not easily defeated. Will try my best to overcome. Haha..

Back to story.

Li Fang arrived the lab around 10 a.m. I just follow whenever she goes. FYI, she is one of my faculty mate from UTM majoring in pure biology. She said she wants to go and check out the Grey oyster ( a kind of mushroom) that she have been freeze dried for 3 days. She told me that the freeze dried mushroom will be ground into fine powder for the ease of making mushroom extract. Her research focus on applying mushroom extract to help prevent neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer , Parkinson and Huntington disease. These are the related diseases that i can think of at this moment. Li fang's uncle has a very established mushroom farm in Jenjarom. What i can say is , she has broad knowledge on mushroom. She can name the mushroom scientifically and spontaneously. Her sister is doing plant tissue culture on mushroom as well in Perth, Australia.I foresee their mushroom business will grow nationwide as they have very solid knowledge on these ' gilled fungi'. :)

Priscilla, who will be doing a similar project with Li Fang came to the lab later. She was absent yesterday and missed out some important calculation taught by the senior. Therefore, Li fang will assist her by briefly going through with her on what the senior has taught yesterday. Some essential calculation on tissue culture. I get to learn what is coating. Intriguing!

Ah ha, I get to chit chat with Mei Lin today. A girl from UMT who is now working as a RA in Pharmacology department. To be frank, she is a very outspoken girl and it was nice to have a long conversation with her. She was very frustrated with her plates as her desired bacteria wasn't growing and the agar is feeding the fungi instead. Hmmm..can understand how she felt. Sometimes, things just do not turn out right. But i believe tomorrow will be another brand new day. So hopefully the new plates will be free from contamination so that she can carry on with her work as planned.

I digressed too much from the title. haiz. I always tend to be long winded.

After having lunch with lab mates in Seksyen 17, we proceeded to the Anatomy department in Medic fac. Car park for student is like flying pig over there. Tsk tsk tsk ...But we 'managed' to park illegally!Clap Clap...Then we went to the animal house or also known as Animal Holding Unit (AHU) to get the mice. Although the smell sucks,the rabbits over there are so cute and surprisingly they are very aggressive and hyperactive. I wonder what they have gone through. Big thanks to them , as they are assisting researchers in conducting research to help mankind. It wasn't sound fair to me. I am totally against vivisection. But the contradict part is I am a researcher. Wtf.

Mice were dissected and undergone perfusion. Li fang mistakenly poked the heart chamber. I am not sure which chamber to poke. Blood bursted! We looked at each other and it was our turn to burst into laughter. Gee...Luckily it didn't stain my lab coat or hit right to my face. Thank god. Perfusion method is a method to drain out all the blood from the mice and eventually preserved it with chloroform. Normally, the mice will not shivered as it happened today. But as Li fang has mistakenly poked the wrong chamber, the mice shivered and there are mucus and blood coming out from the nostril. Can u imagine the mice even bite its own tongue?!It was tough in aiming the right chamber to poke as the heart beats very fast.The purpose for her to do dissection is to examine the sciatic nerve and do immuno staining before she can carry out some in vivo experiments.

In the case of rat surgery , the rat wasn't dissected or sacrificed. The fur on the femur was trimmed before the surgery was carried out. Li fang is good , as she found the sciatic nerve in less than few seconds without digging the flesh. She disrupted the sciatic nerve in order to see what will happen to the rat. As far as i know, the leg movement of the rat will be limited. Phew...At last , come to the stitching part. The flesh was stitched before the skin. Stitching is the fun part as it is so similar to what a doctor is doing. Finally, we applied some chloramphenicol on the stitches to prevent infection. Li fang said stitches will cause itchiness to the rat and they usually bite the stitches off. Awww...Little rat, please don't do that for the sake of your leg...infected wound is going to give you much more pain.

Then, we called it another working day. But gals, it was totally an experience for me!Thanks for including me on your 'adventure'.

Drive home and again traffic jam is unavoidable ...I hate congestion.: (

Till the next post.