THE DIARY GAME || 10 January 2023 || Morning Routine, Lab Work (Water distillation, colony harvest, Packaging of samples for storage, media preparation, autoclaving of waste e.t.c)

Hello fellow steemians,

I am very pleased to share with you all here my activities for 10th January, 2023, it was actually a stressful and irksome day for me.

MORNING ROUTINE

I woke up at around 5:30am and gave thanks to God for the gift of healthy life. After which I went went out and brushed my teeth, I usually brush my teeth before carrying out any activities in order to avoid stomach aches. I finished brushing my teeth and went inside and ironed my clothes, as a preparation for work. I also watched news until it was 7:10am and went inside and bathed, after which I took my breakfast and then set off for work.

ACTIVITIES AT WORK
I arrived at work place at 7:43am and as a norm and part of my duties, I dusted the machines and equipment and also disinfected the work areas of the lab to ensure that all microorganisms that might be on the work surfaces are eliminated to prevent contaminations during work.

Disinfecting and a work area (Biological hood)

When I was done with the disinfection, I went into the freezer room and brought out the samples to be plated.

Removing samples from a -80 degrees freezer

When I brought out the samples, I started drying the media on which the samples were to be plated. I dried 60 plates, which took me more than an hour. After the media was dried and brought out of the oven, I started labeling them with each plate assigned to a particular identification number on the sample tubes

When everything was set ready, my boss then came and started with the plating. When he was done plating all the sixty(60) plates, I packed them in a storage container and stored in an incubator to be read on the following day.

My next activity after I incubated the plates was to read sense. The number growths recorded the previous day was so great, which made the number of sense results I read so plenty that I had to use about an hour to do that. That is to say, each positive growth recorded was plated on seven (7) different Meuller Hinton media plates, with different antibiotics dipped on each of their surfaces. These antibiotics are supposed to inhibit the growth of the plated microorganisms within some particular range or gap. This inhibition describes how sensitive the organism is to the drugs.

All results were carefully read and recorded. After everything was recorded in the record book, the plates were then discarded into a biohazard bag as wasted to be autoclaved for final disposal.

This is usually done to ensure that all infectious wastes or materials are disinfected so that the environment is not polluted when they are disposed off.

My next activity after autoclaving the waste was to prepare some media to be used for the week’s work. This actually took me about an hour, which was very tiresome and stressful. I had to measure the powdered substance and dissolve in some volumes of water, they were then kept in an autoclave and autoclaved at a temperature of 121 degrees Celsius and at a very high pressure. This was stressful because I had to monitor the machine at some time intervals to perform some activities, as part of the SOP’s.

When the autoclave was completed after two (2) hours time, I then removed the media from the machine to a specified waste damp.

My next activity after autoclaving the waste was to harvest colonies (Strep) for storage. The plates to be harvested were arranged and I labeled my tubes which contains some storage media known as STGG, where the colonies were to be stored. I then started the harvesting after everything was set in order, this took about an hour to be completed.

After harvesting the colonies into the tubes, I then vortexed them to ensure that they are well mixed with the storage media (STGG) after which I recorded their IDs and kept them in storage boxes and finally transported into -80 degrees freezer.

The final activity that ended my day at the lab work was water distillation. The purpose of this was to make sure that there is enough water the following work such as media preparation and several others. This took me more than an hour to distill enough water so that we don’t run short in course of any activity.

I completed all my lab activities for the day, so I went and signed out and then departed home. I got home at exactly 7:17pm, that’s an hour time after I left work place. Immediately I enter room and before I did anything, I removed my clothes and took my bath, to wash down all the possible dirt and bacteria that I might have contracted from the work place. Supper was serve, which I ate and in order to avoid some challenges, I didn’t just sleep after eating but I sat for about an hour watching an interesting seasonal movie titled “Prison break”. I went to bed after watching three episodes.

Thank you all for reading through.