2021 Week 35 and January 2022

Hello again, blog! After a chaotic week at the end of Summer 2021, I decided it was time to write again, and said writing ended up languishing in my drafts until now. Many things have changed since I last posted, including my COVID vaccination status (though not on the official system because I was vaccinated in a clinical trial), the order of my supervisors (my former primary supervisor has started a new job but still holds an honorary position at the university), and the place I call home! In fact, the latter two things only changed in mid-August, so the imposed downtime during the chaotic week in question wasn't wholly unwelcome. 

Things got off to a frustrating start on Monday, when I found out at 08:59 that my 9am lab meeting would not be happening this week, after its Friday-afternoon postponement from two weeks prior. My analysis script was also running extra slowly. I went into the office for a few hours in the afternoon, hoping that a change of scenery would help MATLAB along, and I realised the programme was out of memory. 

Tuesday was more productive with presentation and experiment preparation. It turned out to be a very good idea to prepare in advance because I ended up injuring my hands while bell ringing on Tuesday evening, so had to delegate the actual experimenting on Wednesday to the group technician and animal staff. 

My hands healed enough for me to consider animal work on Thursday, but it wasn't to be, because just as the morning meeting was coming to an end, I found out one of my flatmates tested positive for COVID, meaning I had to go straight home. I was allowed to return to the outside world when my own PCR test came back negative, which it did at the end of the week. Unfortunately, that was not the case

2021 Weeks 13 to 14

Hello from someone who went into work on both Palm and Easter Sunday, but at least spent Good Friday and Holy Saturday away from the lab, which can't be said for everybody! I powered through the staining of a further three sets of brain samples before the Easter weekend, but on Maundy Thursday I was horrified to find that the samples I'd prepared the previous weekend looked awful down the microscope. Thinking that the staining had degraded over time, I made plans to come in on Holy Saturday to image the samples finished on Thursday, but on the day I didn't feel up to it and delayed it to Easter Sunday. Fortuitously, Sunday was the only day I was called in to deal with another matter, so I drove over, dealt with that, realised I hadn't needed to do as much as I thought, and proceeded downstairs to the microscope room…

I started by using one of the current week's slide, and unfortunately it looked just as bad as the previous weeks' samples. After sending dejected messages to my family, I realised it could be worth cleaning the objective, and lo and behold, the images looked brilliant! I stayed until 6pm, then got in before 9am on Easter Monday and made it through all but one of the slides stained for brain cells and disease protein before having a well-needed haircut. On Tuesday I imaged that final slide and the ones that shouldn't show anything, then spent the rest of the week analysing the images (1000 in total because of the separate colour channels!), practising surgeries with my supervisor, and putting together my talk, which I gave at the postgrad/postdoc seminar on Friday afternoon.

With all that was going on, I'm quite impressed that I managed to bake two cakes during that period: an orange drizzle at the end of March that actually ended up with some glaze on top, and another marzipan cake this Thursday for a pre-Ramadan food fest. Yesterday, I made the most of the pack of limes I bought for Thai curries last week by making my first lime drizzle cake, which looks a little unappetising due to the lime zest in the drizzle not soaking through the cake. Still, it smells lovely, and I'll report on the taste next week!

2021 Week 12

I was in a tempestuous mood on Monday; I already felt uneasy over the lack of office space and having to contact security to be allowed into the building, and then came confirmation that I won't be able to start the bulk of my project work for at least another five weeks. Thankfully, my current work wasn't impeded by Friday's delays, and removing brains actually felt therapeutic. 

On Tuesday I confused security by coming in for an hour in the morning to transfer my brains to their storage buffer, and then returning after the ARUK Conference sessions to image my brain slices that had a 25-hour wash. Thankfully, they had stained really well, although on Thursday I realised that the control slices also had some background colour on them, so I may need to tweak the settings and/or protocol.

Wednesday was my first full home-working day in a while because the weather put me off going in post-conference, and I realised that there wasn't anything that needed to be done before Thursday morning. I was up early on Thursday, and going from animal unit to lab and back again while in a lab meeting was only slightly chaotic. Going through the surgery procedure with my supervisor was really useful, and helped me to appreciate that what I'm doing and the conditions under which I'm doing it are challenging, so I should give myself some credit! I also took the next lot of brain slices home ready to take for processing on Friday morning.

Thankfully, this Friday went totally smoothly, the roads were very quiet when I dropped off the slices, and they were ready for collection before the final conference sessions began, which gave me much more flexibility for the rest of the day. I was less focused in the afternoon, but I was able to stay grounded and get through my to-do list. I'll have to brave the winds this afternoon and Sunday to finish this set of experiments, but I'm happy to have some structure heading into the next week.

2021 Week 11

It's hard to remember this week prior to Friday, but I will do my best with help from my work diary and 5 Minutes Before Bed journal! 

Monday began with a lab meeting, my notes from which I helpfully wrote on the Wednesday page. On Tuesday, I took brain samples to the other campus to be prepared for later experiments and got a blood blister on my walk home. On Wednesday, I drove to a subway station car park to finally send off my damaged phone and request a replacement, and got to the lab early to help inject some mice. Later that day, I collected the brain slices and filled up with petrol for the first time in six months, once I'd realised that the car needs to be unlocked in order to open the petrol catch. I had a relaxed morning on Thursday before presenting at the journal club and running my primary antibody incubations with ease, which is how I expected the experiment to continue the next day!

I was in early on Friday, managing to start my first wash at 08:41 and salvaged my coffee cup from my locker before the asbestos removal work started in the corridor. About 15 minutes later, the fire alarm started sounding, which we assumed was something to do with the asbestos works, but we followed procedure and left the building. Moments later, we learnt that there was a real fire, and so began several hours of waiting for the building to be made safe. During this time, there was nothing to do but sit around drinking coffee and eventually have a pizza lunch, where we successfully convinced the server that we are students to get the free drinks offer, despite not having our IDs with us! Shortly after the pizza, we were allowed to retrieve our possessions; I was accompanied by one of the firefighters, and was relieved to find everything as I'd left it. On Saturday, I was able to finish my experiment after the first half-hour wash was extended by nearly 25 hours, but access will still be restricted going into next week. I also had an enjoyable walk around the city, and interacted with one of my favourite bands, B*Witched, after listening to the first episode of their new podcast, Starting Over!

2021 Week 10

Last week was pretty successful, I'm still managing to navigate the uncertainty, and becoming hopeful that I'm now closer to the next time I'll see my family and partner in person than the last time. On Tuesday and Thursday, I was in the in vivo lab reminding myself of the surgical procedure, while Wednesday and Friday taught me that the Thioflavin S stain needs to be made up fresh on the day from the powder! At the weekend, I experienced my first power cut as an adult, and baked my go-to marzipan cake!

2021 Weeks 8 and 9

I regretted not making last week's post cover two weeks, so now that week 9 is over, I'll make my past -and hopefully future- self happy by combining the past two weeks! 

All the way back on Monday 22^nd February, I collected slices for an immunohistochemistry experiment to work out the best dilution for staining the star-shaped support cells, and to test whether the stain worked alongside rabbit antibodies. I also repeated my stains for neurons, the cells of the brain which fire electrical signals, and disease-causing proteins, which confused me the previous week. I took images on Thursday and Saturday; this confirmed that the former antibodies were compatible, and I saw much more of the structure of the brain's immune cells than I'd seen previously! The confusing staining pattern for the disease-causing protein was still present, which at least meant I could rule out interference of other stains as the source of the werdness.

This week, I used my fancy non-cross-reactive mouse antibody alongside the rat antibody to see whether disease-causing protein is located near to the star-shaped cells. My first images suggested that's not really the case, although the confusing staining seemed to be a bit brighter in the star-shaped cells than it was in the neurons. For once I took the whole of Saturday off, but it was still very busy, with an online bellringing course sandwiched by nail painting, and the selection of 1–3 Eurovision songs depending on how much later I stay up!

Nail art to support Jüri Pootsmann, whose song Magus Melanhoolia came third in Estonia's national final for Eurovision 2021.

2021 Week 7

Almost at the end of week 8 now, but here's a quick post about last week, when the weather evolved from snow to double-figure temperatures! I collected my own brain slices on Tuesday, and delightfully my rat antibody to visualise the star-shaped support cells in the brain arrived the same day! I couldn't resist trying it out, which was a good decision, as I realised the mouse secondary antibody also bound to it, so I've been able to order a better mouse secondary antibody to test next week without wasting multiple slices!

I imaged on both Friday and Saturday because there was lots to get through, but I've ended up with good images of four brain regions, even if the staining pattern of one of the antibodies was a little unexpected! Outside the lab, I baked another lemon and blueberry drizzle cake and took a nice long walk in the Sunday sunshine.

Maybe next time the blueberries won't all settle at the bottom!

City views