A Muggle's Laboratory

As it has been almost a year and a half into this pandemic with hopeful news on the horizon with the vaccine rollout. Here is my next blog post, so grab a cuppa and happy reading!!

When the pandemic started it was all very new to all of us and a whole new life experience that will probably be spoken about for generations. Seeing major sporting events and holidays being cancelled as countries went into lockdown, cinemas, gyms, shopping centres, restaurants, and places of worship also closing down for many of us including myself was quite daunting. The closing down of social entertaining for all of us was a major change to our life and routine.

I remember when the UK initially first went into lockdown. It was my week off from work and I was about to start my new position in the immunology department. I experienced the first week of lockdown as any young adult; I recreated the toilet roll challenge with my family, baked (when I finally found self-rising flour), binge-watched marvel movies, attempted Dalgona Coffee and face timed and had quizzes with my friends. 

Like many people, I thought lockdown would end in one month and life would resume back to normal, however that turned into something much longer if we include local lockdowns, our second and third lockdown.

Working throughout lockdown was exciting first, I was able to commute to work with nice views, step out of the house and also see my work colleagues. However, it eventually started to get draining as I felt I had the same routine every day and I had nothing to look forward to on the weekend. I started to walk different routes to the work and train station to “change” things up a bit and tried to do something different every evening, which helped. 

As many companies had introduced working from home policy and all the schools had closed following government guidance , it led to a decrease in public transport. This was the first challenge I faced during the lockdown.

As mentioned in a previous post I am originally from Yorkshire and I travel to Manchester. The train I catch is considered to be one of the busiest trains during both peak and non-peak periods as it passes through some major cities in the north; Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, and Newcastle.

During full lockdown, I was the only person catching the train from my hometown. In the years where I have been commuting by train, I have never seen the train station and train so empty. It was like I was in an apocalypse. 

There was nobody. 

Just me. 

I felt quite lonely on the train as I’m so used to the busy bustle of people, the low hum of someone’s music coming from their headphone, the quiet chatter amongst those commuting, having to stand or be squashed in a corner of the train throughout most of my journey as the train used to be so busy. These little things I found comfort in them and with lockdown I missed them. 

Travelling to work was difficult during the lockdown as trains weren’t as regular. To get to my hometown, the train was departing from Manchester every 2 hours, so when I finished work, I couldn’t catch up with my colleagues, instead, I was running for the bus so I could catch the train in time. During this period, I was second-guessing my career choice and my job overall as commuting was becoming difficult. I brought the topic up with my friends and family and I am so fortunate to have such supportive people around me who motivated me to continue working throughout the pandemic and constantly reminded me “it’ll be worth it!!” and “the pandemic will end.” Keeping this motto and building up my resilience I managed to overcome the struggle. 

As everyone in my family is an essential worker, myself and my parents eventually caught Covid. The virus impacted my family quite badly. My symptoms included high temperature, coughing, joint pains, and severe headaches. After my 10 days of isolation was over, I had to get my chest checked because I still had tightness and a chesty cough. I am also asthmatic, so it made the situation even worse. I ended up on a course of antibiotics and steroids. It took me 2 months to make a full recovery, but they are days where I still feel join paints, have a tight chest, and am exhausted. I am now fully vaccinated and will get a yearly vaccine if it becomes part of the UK vaccination program. 

In September 2020 I started my top-up modules so I could achieve IBMS accreditation for my degree. I did my top-up modules in Hematology and Transfusion Science and Cellular Pathology. Doing my top-up modules during the pandemic was a whole new experience. Due to the pandemic, the course was done at home via distancing learning online. I planned my week by having days where I would study after work and days where I’d relax. Having a diary was quite useful as it helped me stay organized.

As Biomedical science is a very laboratory-based degree, most of the course is spent inside a laboratory, answering laboratory-based questions for my top-up units was difficult as I did not experience first-hand laboratory practicals for my units.

I found Cellular Pathology quite difficult as a lot of the practicals were done via live session online and then I had to apply what I learned from that session to answer the questions in a workbook. This was difficult as I am a very hands-on person and the lack of laboratory experience made it difficult for me to understand. I was hoping to carry out some Cellular pathology laboratory practicals, as I haven’t had experience with cutting tissues and looking at live tissues. This was an experience I missed out on and hope I get an opportunity to see the Cellular Pathology Laboratory one day.

Despite lockdown having a lot of bad memories, there were some good memories as well. As I come from a large family, I’m used to seeing my extended family quite often throughout the weekend and holidays. The pandemic meant I couldn’t visit them due to there being elderly and new-born babies in the family.   So instead of we’d FaceTime every day and took turns hosting zoom quizzes every Sunday to test our knowledge on different things. 

Due to lockdown been extended into some parts of the summer I decided to take up the hobby of planting some vegetables in the garden. I planted coriander, mint, spinach, and I attempted tomatoes, but mother nature had other plans. Also, throughout lockdown, I wanted to improve a skill, so I perfected my baking technique. I can now successfully decorate cupcakes like a professional and make some delicious cookies. Unfortunately, I haven’t perfected brownies so if anyone knows a good recipe, hit the ‘comments’ below and forward me some recipes I could try out.

The Covid pandemic put a pause on life and has shown to have both positive and negative sides. Putting aside the negative side of the pandemic; I got closer to my family as we were spending a lot of time at home together, I learned new skills, found my love for reading again, and became a better version of myself.

Thank you for taking your time in reading these posts leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts on the pandemic.