This week at the lab Kacy and I met the lab manager, Molly Brennan. She and Adam are going to be our main supervisors during our time here. We have continued to assist Adam with his rat sessions and their alcohol dependence. Molly is planning on having Kacy and I start our own sessions soon. When the animals arrive next week, we will have to train them on how to use the levers to get water/alcohol and get them used to being handled. While we wait for the animals to come in, we have been helping around the lab. We have helped clean and dismantle some boxes from the nicotine study, organize the lab, and make catheters for the rats. The catheters will be surgically placed into the rats that are used in other studies.
The clamp on the metal rectangle is what the catheters look like in the molds before we remove them.
Catheters are how the rats access the drugs for nicotine, meth, cocaine, heroin. Since these drugs are not orally consumed like alcohol, they are converted to a liquid which is pumped through a tube that is connected to the catheters. Each time the rats push a lever the drug goes into the catheter which is in their jugular vein so the high is almost instant.
Paddle boarding on the 4th of July
La Jolla Shores
When we are not in the labs, we have been spending time with our host family, Michelle, and Sam. For the 4th of July we went paddle boarding for a couple hours before going to watch the fireworks. From where we were we could see the fireworks from the country club as well as the La Jolla Cove. We have also gone shopping a few times. One day we went shopping for gifts since we all knew we would want to bring things home to our friends and families. We have also gone shopping for ourselves and bought some clothes at the mall and some touristy things. One day after we finished our internships, we decided to go to La Jolla Shores and enjoy the beach. While we were there we collected shells and people watched. On Saturday Kacy, Michelle, and I met Sam at the San Diego Zoo. We spent close to 3 hours there and managed to cover a lot of the area. Sam got to see pandas for the first time ever and was pretty excited about that. After the zoo, we all went and got froyo at one of the local stores.
I’m excited to see what this next week will be like.
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