A quick update

There is so much I actually want to update about, but the problem is there is work. And well, boy howdy, I'm feeling so gosh darned good that I actually don't mind doing as much as I can today at work! And then to go home and work some more. And I really mean that. I'm feeling amazing lately.

The exam: It went without a hitch. I would almost dare call it....easy! Special thanks goes out to a few particular someone's who took time out of their day to help me study. You know who you are! *winks* And believe it or not, our study sessions managed to bring back, in familiarity, the correct answer to at least two or three questions on my 200 question boards exam. I am proud to say there is no way I could not have passed. I would have had to miss 80 questions and it just simply isn't possible.

Olf opted out. Troubled triplets abducted facial vestiments, glossing vague spines hypoactively!

The 12 cranial nerves. And the wonderful vision of lazy midget emo triplets stealing people's nose rings and trying to sell them for a liquid to cover their back tattoos in. *grins* Yes. I still remember. I don't think I will ever forget.

The weekend: Dancing! Dinner! Drinking! The three D's. Haha. But not all at the same time, but all with the same person. We went to dinner and dancing the night before the boards to loosen me up and hopefully make me not stress out about the upcoming exam. It did wonders for me. The SCA dancing had me hopping around so much I actually managed an amazingly good sleep that night. Otherwise I would have stayed up worrying and barely slept. The dinner was fantabulous too. And drinking? That was the night after the exam. After playing both Advanced Rummy and Spite and Malice with the family, we headed into downtown Albany. And you know what? It was totally worth it. And being held both those nights, well, even more totally worth it. *grins*

Upcoming weekends: This weekend is Genericon and you bet your buttons I'm going to be there! I am going to be working the late shift in the gaming hall. I might try and talk myself out of the second late shift, but either way, yayness! I'm really excited about this year's convention. Maybe because it will be my first convention that I'm going to free of baggage. I feel free and happy and well, shit, my exam is over! So I'm all about celebrating! The weekend after? Possible SCA dance if I can register in time. Reminding myself to do that now.

I've taken quite a few months on and off from the internet and various other tasks and I've never felt so healthy and happy before. I'm smiling! I'm honest to god smiling when I walk down the street. I have a great job, good friends, and special people in my life. Life, I can say quite officially, is good.

I will give a much better update later when I am more able and apt to do it. But for now, there is pinworm to hunt down! Yee-haw!

The Basics

After much thought and haggling with myself, here is a day in the life of my job as I happen to live it. I've chosen to explain one of my favorite but most frustrating sort of days instead of one of my more average days.

Sentinels. Sentinels are mice that are given the bedding of other mice so that if any of those others have any form of parasite or disease that they will give them to the sentinel. Then, instead of testing hundreds of lives, we only need to test one to screen for disease, bacteria, and external and internal parasites.

Our building have five floors to it. Each floor has around 35 rooms in it. Each room holds, at average, 8 racks. Each rack holds, at average, 100 cages. Each cage holds, at average, 10 mice. Two of those cages on each rack have sentinels which are labeled A and B and are spaced one high, one low, and numbered according to rack number. So, for every 50 cages we have four sentinel mice in one cage. That makes around 18 sentinel cages per room with four mice in each of those cages. A lot of calculations, ne?

On this particular sort of day, I wake myself at 5am so I can be at work by around 6:30-7:00am. That is when everything starts. I have enough time to take off my coat before another vet tech comes along and we grab a cart and collect sentinels from 10 of those rooms mentioned previously. To collect, we first have to put on our PPE's (personal protective equipment) that consists of: a labcoat, shoe covers, bouffant (head cover), face mask, and gloves. Once properly attired we can move from the dirty side of the hall into the SPF rooms (specific pathogen free - meaning they were given to us with not having particular diseases we asked for them not to have. Doesn't mean they will stay that way, though). Once inside we take collection buckets and mark off our mice. One mouse comes out of each sentinel cage and is marked, with a sharpie (the blue is my fav) with tic marks along their tail to indicate which number rack they came from. The B sentinels then get a stripe placed down their back to seperate them from the A's.

10 rooms later, all the mice are collected and I return to diagnostics with them. I then have to collect the fecal sample from each of the buckets in order to later test each of those for pinworm. After collecting fecals I then begin to label blood collection tubes as well as plates for the cecum/headcap combo.

About the same time I finish labeling, three other vet techs come into diagnostics and we all go into necropsy for processing. Processing, although a long process, is actually quite simple. There is just a large number of mice, remember. 10 rooms x 8 racks x 2 sentinels per rack = 160 mice. Processing moves along like this.

Each bucket is euthanized using CO2 gas. Once the mice are all dead (yes, we check to make certain) we then do a cardiac stick. A cardiac stick consists of taking a needle and bringing it into the thorax underneath the xyphoid process and doing a blind stick into the heart. All a blind stick means is you are trying to hit the vein (or the heart, as this case may be) without seeing what you are doing (since there is flesh and bone in the way of your line of sight). We are usually able to extract 0.5ml of blood from the heart, but sometimes we are lucky and grab a whole 1.0ml. Once that is finished, the mouse is passed to the next person who then does a head cap (basically removing the scalp, ears and all) and then the cecum (removing a piece of intestine in order to view for parasites). Between all of those things, we can fully determine if any other mouse in that room is sick with any of a broad spectrum of things.

After we finish with all the mice, I return to diagnostics and the vet techs are gone once again. I set up my fecals and let them sit to collect ova if there are any while I read the cecum headcaps under a dissecting microscope. I view each for parasites, both external and internals that are barely visible with the naked eye. Once I am finished with all of that I go ahead and read my fecals, searching for eggs, or ova, in each sample to determine if they have pinworms that could not be seen in the cecum.

The blood is usually taken care of by my coworker, but more often than not I am also the one spinning down the blood and then seperating the serum from the red blood cells in order to get it ready for ELISA testing the next day (enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay). The testing is fairly simple and I would be happy to describe the process if anyone is intersted.

After reading all my samples and preparing the blood samples and then cleaning up, it is usually time to go home for the day.

And that, very basically, is what I do. I will not tell you what role I am in the necropsy room as I'm sure just knowing I do one of those things is enough to disgust most people.