(no subject)

[tylik]

So I've been having trouble with anesthesia recently. Part of this is me probably getting better at identifying problems in in vivo work. Maybe that's all of it. Hard to say.

What's been happening is that when I do iced anesthesia, the muscles in the jaws lock. Since I'm doing surgeries on the feeding apparatus, this is a major problem.

I've been trying a lot of variants. Monday I did a surgery with just MgCl (but less than the official protocol called for, because when I tried that the slugs weren't coming back). The slug wasn't entirely unresponsive, which a) has me worried I'm hurting it b) makes surgery harder and c) kind of creeps me out. But it was still the easiest surgery I'd done for a while. And the next day the slug was up, about and eating, making my best recovery ever. (It wasn't a very complete surgery, more like the tests I did last December.)

Tuesday I started a surgery, used the same amount of MgCl, and then ice. Jaws locked up. As soon as this was apparent I gave up and put the slug back. (Who is recovering, but not recovering that well. I'm starting to wonder if this ice thing is such a great idea... I mean, I didn't cut him *at all*.)

So today I did a more complete surgery with no ice. (Also preferred because micro-surgery with partially frozen hands? Oh yeah...) The surgery went great. Put the slug to recover. The third time or so I went to check on him his holding tank had disappeared under a couple of cubic feet of foam. (Oh, yeah - when distressed, sometimes they don't just ink, they slime. And the slime foams with the bubblers.) So I cleaned up everything, put him into a clean tank... and he's about half the size he should be. His muscles are tight, and I'm assuming he managed to push out most of his hemolymph, probably through the injection site. One unhappy slug.

Now again, Aplysia are to a first approximation bags of salt water. If he survives the next bit - and at least he's probably gotten rid of most of the MgCl - he'll puff back up. But... poor slug.

For my next trick I will try smearing their mouths with a topical anasthetic aimed at humans... oh, hell, with over-the-counter lidocaine. But I'm kind of bummed right now.