Hello! It’s been quite a long time since my last post here in forums. I’m a casual player playing on survival (quite few runs I supposed) and gamemodes so maybe some of you knew me or maybe no one lol. In serious note, I’ve been busy these last few months working on our thesis and it’s tiring but quite fun tbh. Be warned that this will be quite a lengthy post so read at your own risk.
For those who don’t know (maybe all of you), I’m a medical laboratory scientist student. Our thesis is more on animal research testing and it’s kinda out of our routines as we’re not well versed in zoology. So we reached out an accredited animal laboratory facility that will train and teach us how to handle rats. Thankfully, we got along with our research director in the lab facility and he explains us the procedure and what we will do inside. Ofc, we also discuss the ethical considerations that we will do. So, before the actual one week crucial period, we were trained and quite knowledgeable on the procedure (ofc we should). Our phytomedicine product will be tested on Sprague-Dawley rats. Oh, I forgot to mention we also discuss the breakdown of expenses. And here comes the heartbreak and cruel reality of how darn expensive a pilot medicine study is. All laboratory expenses amounts to $2000. Training, facility, foods (ofc this better be good), rats, cage rents, feeds, etc. are all included.
We were in the facility for about one week. Thank goodness we had our academic break that time so we’re not worrying about our professors bombarding us with laboratory activities of our other subjects. We basically ate, slept, and took our hygiene activities there. The foods (our research director cooked them) we ate are so bomb that we want to hire him as a chef in our cafeteria lol. Kidding aside, this one week period is really crucial as we will know if the product is effective or not, so we monitor them 24/7 and took turns every 6 hours. The actual oral gavage and intramuscular injection is ofc handled by our research director and we are tasked in assisting him and preparing the dosages of the drug. Afterwards, we’re left to observe the effects for a week. Man, this observation is soooo boring that we were practically caught dozing off quite a few times. It’s understandable since we cannot get quite good sleep. And one thing to note, there’s a wifi connection! Relying on phone internet data plan is basically signing up for a 3g speed connection (which is nah-uh).
One week later, we have our results and deep eye bags (we’re all grumpy at this point). Fortunately, the research testing showed promising results (such a hugeee relief). All that is left is euthanasia. We’re all sad that this procedure is needed to be done. But, we need to abide the protocols and our research director handled that. We’re not in the facility when that was done (a relief I would say) as I dont want to witness that. We were assured that was handled as humanely as possible and I believed that.
Now that crucial period is done, we’re burdened by one problem: the payment. Before the procedure, we payed half of the payment and needed to pay the remaining by the end of this month. At this point, I am ashamed to ask for money to my parents so I worked as a freelance writer last three weeks or so. Unfortunately, it’s not enough and when I’m worrying about where to gather the remaining funds, I received a heavenly text message informing my college financial assistance will be given tomorrow! Hallelujah! Now, I don’t need to worry about the funds. Oh, you’re asking what about our institution’s support or government research funding? Don’t bother asking that. We gave up months ago as the processes is sooo darn long we will basically graduate by the time the funds were in plus the approval we submitted in the department for research funding is not signed up to this date (we submitted it last September). So you can say, it’s all fully our money we’re pouring out in this research. Now, we plan to schedule our defense before the year ends so we we have one less to worry next year as finals are coming (ugh not this again). We only needed to work on statistical analysis, data presentation, defense, and revisions afterwards. So, I’m proud to say that our research group is united and we can now escaped the clutch of time pressured thesis works.
Now, I can finally take a breather and play genshin and terraria! Sniff sniff lols
That’s it and maybe, Ill post an update on the results of our thesis defense. Wish us luck!