pelf-ism is contagious

Today J and I did something totally incomprehensible.

We bled a lot of terrapins - for the sake of knowledge - the WRONG way. Because we have yet to master the right way

I needed the blood for a hematology study, and I needed a lot of them in order for the results to be representative. Simply put, I need a certain number of samples before I can make any conclusions out of the study. But I have never bled a turtle successfully.

These are the 1 cc syringes that we used. I thought the syringes were too small because I never seem to hit it right into the vein. We kept missing the vein and blood gushed out onto the skin instead of being sucked INTO the syringes.

I prepared some of these containers (they’re supposed to be called cuvettes) into which we should store the blood obtained (but only for a short while because reptile blood clots quickly).

Once the blood is filled into the cuvette, I dipped one of these hematocrit tubes into it, and blood will be “sucked in automagically”.

And then I sealed the ends with, you guessed it, plasticine to ensure the (very precious) blood in the hematocrit tube remains IN THE TUBE. After this, the hematocrit tubes were subjected to a “spinning job” in the centrifuge machine at 70 rpm for 5 minutes - I know, this is too technical, even for my own understanding. Will come back to this as soon as I am able to take some pictures of the centrifuge machine and still put on a straight face while everybody else wonders what Pelf is doing.

Next was the blood smear. If you thought dripping a drop of blood onto the glass slide and covering it with a cover slip is an easy job, you are awfully WRONG. And so were we. As it turns out, the terrapin blood clot faster than we could line the glass slides, drip a drop of blood, and make a smear. So we actually really need an additional pair of hands. A friend of mine mastered the “art” of handling it herself after six-freaking-months. GREAT.

We used the cotton wool to drab some alcohol onto the puncture site so that we do not accidentally introduce any foreign objects into the blood stream. But we never GOT into the blood stream, remember?!

Some methanol. The only thing magnificent that the methanol did to me today was to effectively remove my nail colour.

We tried and tried and tried. But J got most of the blood because he was more cruel. I thought it was bad that we had to hurt the terrapins to get some of their blood for some tests only we human beings are interested in. But it was even worse when we had to do over and over again, at the same area because we simply couldn’t puncture the vein! *pulls hair*

So after a morning’s hard work, we managed to collect five-pathetic-hematocrit-tubes of blood samples and six-badly-made smears.

I need to get back to school.