Jello flavours that didn't make the cut

Grape and beef liver and cherry and beef kidney. Yum.

No, these were not for eating (to state the obvious). We were using them to practice biopsies and fine needle aspirates using ultrasound. I may have mentioned before that I'm terrified of ultrasound. Like, it might as well be alien technology (hm, maybe I should have stayed in my costume...). But that's no reason to avoid it. If anything that's more reason to work with it as much as possible.

I was lucky to get my name drawn to do the biopsy/FNA wetlab this afternoon. Of course, it's Halloween, so that meant quickly changing out of my 11th Doctor costume before running down to the radiology department. After a brief introduction to the equipment, the vet guided us one on one in taking a biopsy of a bovine kidney buried in grape jello. It was dark enough that you couldn't cheat by looking for the kidney, and I actually surprised myself with how kidney-ish the kidney looked on the screen. Granted, jello is an almost perfect medium for conducting ultrasound because there's nothing in it, and it's uniform densitty and it conducts the sound waves really well. But I could see the needle on the screen going into it and felt the "pop" when I hit the capsule, and managed to get a sample. Very cool. The vet compared it to playing video games. Always knew my Final Fantasy obsession would pay off. See, you're watching the screen. Your non-dominant hand (left for me) is holding the ultrasound probe, your dominant hand is holding the biopsy gun. (You could do it the other way, but I agreed with the vet when she said, "If I'm going to be stabbing an animal, I'd rather do it with the hand I have the most control with." Wise words.) Is it easy? Oh lord no. I found out my left hand likes to think for itself, because it kept wanting to drift around. Next thing I know, I can't find my needle on the screen because the probe is now an inch away from it. Stupid left hand.

Then it was on my own for fine needle aspirate. You're taking a smaller sample, so you just use a normal needle with a syringe. I'd been practicing pulling back a plunger with one hand, and figured I was getting pretty good at it. So I poke into the cherry jello, down into the kidney, and flick my thumb to pull back the plunger and take a sample. Yeah, you didn't really believe that, did you? The bloody plunger wouldn't budge. After trying it one handed (the correct way) for a few minutes, and therefore, looking like an idiot for a few minutes (luckily, just in front of my peers, not in front of the vet), I finally had to give up and adjust my grip to get a sample. Lesson learned, I have weak puny thumbs.

As a bonus, the vet told us we were welcome to use the jello for a few weeks while it was still good and we could come down after hours to use the portable ultrasound machine to practice. I plan on doing this. I also plan on embarking on an intense strength training program for my thumb.