Yet another rush…

It’s a familiar story by now. Tomorrow is not one, but two experiments in the OR. In fact, I’m going to be so busy tomorrow that I’m probably going to write tomorrow’s post today. The good (or at least interesting) news there is that I have a good topic lined up for tomorrow since it just happened to fall in my lap. But for today, well let’s just say there’s not a whole lot of time.

When I got up this morning I was under the impression that today would be a quick day in the office. I would get the equipment together, make sure everything is ready for the big day, and be done. In, out, and that’s the way I like doing things. No point in working harder if it’s not needed. Unfortunately it’s never that easy.

Case in point, today we have a different experiment going on outside of the lab. An experiment that requires the equipment to be taken from the cart and brought to another campus. So the cart is currently sitting empty and my hopes of having the equipment prepped and tested for tomorrow are dashed beyond hope. The equipment will be in use for the rest of the day, so the hope is that my colleague who is using it will have the cart back the way I need it for the morning.

The problem with that is they have no idea how I needed the cart, so I had to walk them through how I need things set up before they had to leave with everything to start their experiment. It’s a hot mess people and I’m not super thrilled. It will be okay obviously and we’ll work through whatever we need to tomorrow. But for now, there is no real prep I can do so a full day of getting things together to make my life easier has gone down the toilet.

The brightside (if there is one) is that we’ve talked about how to make life easier for everyone when we go into the OR tomorrow and I’m somewhat confident that things will go smoother than they have been. Maybe, we’ll see. The nice thing about having two experiments in one day is that I can go in, try some things, and have the experience fresh for the next experiment so I know what worked and what didn’t.

So what’s the plan for today? Not much now that I can’t do anything. I’ve coordinated with the clinical staff and they know we will be in the OR so that’s done, but other than that there’s not a whole lot I can do to be ready for the big day. It’s a little stressful, but at least hospital-PI will be there for both experiments so I will have a second set of hands to do things while I’m busy doing my own stuff.

With a little luck, we’ll have some good data tomorrow and I’ll be able to spend the rest of the week poking around and making sense of it all. It should be an interesting week if all goes well. Oh and since you’re here and made it this far into the post, here’s a little reward. Tomorrow I’ll be sharing that paper I was super excited about. Yep, I’m breaking anonymity yet again, but it’s too good not to share!