rat lover and heart breaker

(My phone decided to meet me half-way today.  I was able to get the photos off, but the video remains trapped.  Check back in a few days to see if I have posted the video.  I think I will be making a trip to the Verizon store to figure out this complicated phone!)

Since the last update, a lot of progress has been made on my lab project.  After testing all the blood pressures, I did some preliminary runs on the treadmill so that we could assign the rats to various experimental groups.  Unfortunately, not all rats are good runners, so we needed to test them to see which ones knew how to run in a straight line.  (Not all of them can!  Some will sit on the moving treadmill belt and let it run under their butt.  Others will run the wrong direction or can't keep up with the lowest minimum speed.)  I have video of them running that I will have to post later.  Here is a photo of the rats on the treadmill.

On Thursday and Friday, we completed the surgeries for the rats to place hormone pellets under their skin.  It was super interesting, and I  actually got to perform some of the surgeries from start to finish.  The rats were anesthetized using ketamine.  Then, we shaved their neck, made an incision in the scruff of the neck, inserted the pellet, and sutured them back up.  I am happy to report that all rats survived, and that none of the sutures I did have been pulled out by restless rats.  I also had to "baby-sit" the rats coming off the anesthesia, which is incredibly amusing.  In humans, ketamine has been known to induce hallucinations, and I can only imagine that it might do the same in rats.  When they first wake up, they are so out of it.  They need to be kept warm, so we line them up on heating pads.  Once they begin to move their heads, you can pick them up.  They get super cuddly and like to sit really still in your hands.  After enough anesthesia has worn off, you put them back in their cage where they look like drunken sailors as they run in circles, bob their heads, and fall over.  I have a video of this that I hope to post because it is so funny.  In the meantime, here are some photos to give you the idea.

This is the lab tech, Lyn, performing one of the surgeries.

Here is the Dr. Al-Nakkash, the professor that runs the lab, working on another rat surgery.

This is the recovery area, with all the rats lying on the heating pads while coming out of the anesthesia.

On the left is one of the rats that I operated on.  Don't my sutures look nice?  (Other than the fact that they are all covered in Neosporin gel that stuck to the thread.) On the right is one of the rats that is coming out of the anesthesia.  She looks a little funny because the ketamine makes their eyes bug out a bit.

Today, I helped prepare some samples from the earlier portions of my project.  This involved "grinding hearts", which is exactly what it sounds like...sort of.  We had some frozen hearts from rats that had done a similar exercise protocol last year.  Soon, we are going to start analyzing the tissue and probing for protein markers.  Therefore, we need to heart tissue in tiny sample sizes to fit in the equipment and so we need to smash it up.  Traditionally, the hearts are mashed with a mortar and pestle, but this obviously makes a bloody mess.  To make the process faster and less bloody, we froze the hearts with liquid nitrogen.  This makes them so cold that you can shatter them into a million little pieces with a hammer.  Then you can scoop up the heart "powder" and put it into a vial for analysis.  Not everyday to you get to freeze things with liquid nitrogen, smash them, and call it science.  (Actually, anytime you work with liquid nitrogen, it is pretty cool.  It is just neat neat stuff.)  In the photo on the right, you can see the ground heart in the center piece.  The outer box hold the liquid nitrogen that keeps the entire apparatus cold, as evidenced by the ice crystals condensing on the sides.

In unrelated news, I had a pretty fun weekend.  Friday night, I went and saw Inception (the new Leo DiCaprio movie) with my friend Vicki.  It was by far one of the best movies I have seen in a long time.  The movie is a bit of a thinker, but has a very cool plot and great special effects that don't overshadow the story.  After the movie, we used our ticket stubs to get a discount on some froyo.  Frozen yogurt is HUGE down here.  All the stores are pretty similar too.  You get a cup, fill it with a flavor (or 2 or 3) of your choice, and then add toppings from the toppings bar.  They weigh it and you pay per ounce.  I love all the different combination options.

On Saturday, Mindi woke me up bright and early for breakfast.  In downtown Phoenix, there is a popular breakfast joint known as Matt's Big Breakfast.  Despite the name, the restaurant is actually very very small and only holds about 25 people at a time.  It is super popular since being featured on "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" on the Food Network.  Check it out.

It was worth the wait though, because the food was VERY good.  Everything was fresh and homemade.  After breakfast, we caught the matinee showing of Toy Story 3.  Taking kids to the movies on a Saturday morning must be a popular thing for parents to do, because the theatre was FILLED with fussy children.  I just had to laugh because it had been so long since I have been around really little kids.  The movie was really good though, and both Mindi and I (and even maybe her husband Anthony) were bawling by the end.  Leave it to Disney/Pixar to make you cry at a movie about toys.  It comes highly recommended from me though!

Finally on Sunday, in an attempt to beat the heat and find an air-conditioned activity that wasn't watching a movie, Vicki and I went to a paint your own pottery place.  I had never done it before and really enjoyed it.  I loved the opportunity to paint and be creative while socializing with my friend.  Overall, it was a super relaxing way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  I can pick up my vase tomorrow, so we'll see how the project turned out.

That's probably about it for now, after this marathon post.  I have to be in the lab tomorrow morning, as it is the first day of the exercise protocol for the rats.  I will go from beloved caretaker to hated personal trainer.  Hopefully the special work-out music playlist I made for them will make it a little more bearable!