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.