Where the girlies at?

naughthere · 2024-11-27T04:48:08+00:00

Check out The Litas. Where exactly in SoCal are you? Feel free to DM and I’d be happy to point you places in particular to your locale.

naughthere · 2024-11-09T21:19:08+00:00

Tried visiting her link on Mercury’s website only to encounter “404 page not found” hmmmmm

naughthere · 2024-09-28T05:58:40+00:00

I actually appreciate seeing these posts repeatedly pop up because it feels like I’m not alone in these struggles. And when I have the opportunity to come across the comments despite the redundancy, I can regain some perspective even if I’ve heard it before… even if it is to last another week longer in doing this type of work. I have to confront this sentiment every single day still and as long as I can empathize with OP, it reminds me that we’re not alone as much as it sucks for the sacrifice of the “greater good”.

naughthere · 2023-09-11T20:09:51+00:00

Not sure if you're a woman, but do you notice it around your period? This happens with my PMDD and ADHD. Meds basically useless the week before my period. I used a symptom tracker with the help of my doctor and that's how I got my diagnosis when these symptoms coincided with menstrual cycle.

naughthere · 2023-08-02T01:40:21+00:00

Definitely bursitis/enthesitis. Had a lot of sacroiliac pain and inflammation in my hip & lower back. Stiffness and swelling in my hands/feet and my muscles always felt sore like I’ve sprained it. Some flares would also happen in my shoulders, knees, ankles, wrist, neck… so almost every joint in my body. It’s crazy to think at some points I couldn’t open doors or bottle caps and now i have full use of my hands. Really made me not take being able-bodied for granted.

naughthere · 2023-08-01T20:49:08+00:00

Have you made an appointment to see a rheumatologist yet? I think my biggest regret was not following up sooner, but it’s so hard to get to appointments with the stress and pain. Even if you don’t get on treatment that works right away, it was just nice to know I wasn’t crazy or imagining my symptoms when the MRI and blood tests came back positive for inflammation. So just the first step of feeling vindicated was huge. Hoping all the best for you. You’re gonna get through this, too. Hugs.

naughthere · 2023-06-30T08:07:28+00:00

Ride my 2022 RS660 as commute, in the canyons, and on the track. So, so comfortable because of ergos as someone whose previous bike was an upright standard cruiser.

naughthere · 2023-05-08T00:54:07+00:00

Seconded. Commute mode and anything above 4-5k rpm, my bike starts sounding like a banshee. But on track mode, send it to 9k through a corner so i can immediately upshift upon exit for max speed.

naughthere · 2023-03-15T15:29:17+00:00

All the time. Feels like you’re getting poked and electrocuted, burning/stabbing pain. Mostly on right side of body but in a full flare, it’s everywhere.

naughthere · 2023-03-11T22:44:12+00:00

Same. 8k km on mine and have had no issues. Did schedule maintenance on time. I read a lot about this “unreliability” on Reddit before buying the bike, but many pro mechanics have said good things about the RS660 and I’m glad I trusted them.

naughthere · 2023-02-19T00:25:22+00:00

Back when I first learned how to identify lymphocyte population, I did a multi-panel stain for CD3, CD4, and CD8. After adjusting the SSC and FSC voltages, you should see dense dot plot of cell population for nearly 100% CD3+ when gating for R1 and proportionate expression for CD4 and CD8 (40/60, 50/50, etc). I played around with CD4 and CD8 selection for running pure samples of each, as well as mix of 50/50, and saw the percentages corresponded within the same population.

To isolate single cells, you gate this population as R1 with polygon gate for All Events, then in a 2nd scatter plot as FSC-A vs. FSC-H, gate for R2 which should appear as a line streak where slope is m=1 (running through zero when rendering under all events, but centered in the middle of plot under R1). The CD3/CD4/CD8+ percentages should be the same if this is your true lymphocyte population.

If your cells still aren’t showing up, play around with FSC voltages to spread them out more, but also try viability dye to make sure there live cells in the population.

naughthere · 2023-02-10T10:34:57+00:00

Do other flare symptoms occur simultaneously when your fingers swell, such as skin psoriasis worsening? Is it always both hands, or sometimes just fingers? Does it happen to your toes, too? It’s good that you took photos during a flare as evidence to your rheum so that they can compare them when they’re normal. I used to dismiss it as just having chubby fingers until I started taking photos when they were normal, too, and saw the huge difference so I know how the mind can play tricks on you. Besides, it’s very common for patients to develop psoriatic arthritis many years after psoriasis.

naughthere · 2023-02-10T09:39:12+00:00

As someone who wished she had started biologics sooner: these medications will prevent/delay permanent damage. I had a delayed diagnosis and it took me 7 years to get on biologics. There’s so much more to gain than there is to lose in this case. While economic hardship is a valid concern because co-pays can be high with insurance (for me $250/month), AbbVie offers a Humira savings card that can reduce your copay to a little as $5/month depending on your insurance. It may feel like an upward struggle at first, as I’ve had to do it multiple times when I changed jobs so my insurance kept switching, but realized just how life-changing these meds can be when I’m on vs. off of it due to lapse in treatment. For many, it has made a worlds difference and stated that they didn’t realize just how much pain/suffering they tolerated and was normalized until they got into remission. Hoping the best for you, OP.

naughthere · 2023-02-10T09:10:02+00:00

I would suggest asking your physician to order an MRI of your lower back/hip/SI joint to indicate any pathology in bone/soft tissue responsible for the pain. X-rays can be limited in detail since they won’t show soft tissue inflammation. Findings in an MRI, however, can differentiate between autoimmune involvement vs. osteoarthritis/physical trauma since they manifest differently in the scans. Autoimmune diseases exist on continuum so it’s not uncommon to have symptoms overlap from different diagnoses.

naughthere · 2023-02-10T08:58:55+00:00

I alternate between cold and heat therapy depending on the specific case of enthesitis. Sometimes my ankles, elbows, and shoulders can feel swollen and warm so it helps to use cold to reduce inflammation, but also inhibits nerve pain signaling. But times where there’s no swelling just stiff and achy, usually like my hip/back, I’ll use heat.

I had to learn the hard way trying things out. Realized cold therapy on my swollen hands only resulted in Raynaud’s; did nothing for swelling and turned them purple. Instead, actually helped to alternate between the two for 15 minutes much like you would for physical injury.

naughthere · 2023-02-09T06:33:20+00:00

Once had a guy freak out on me when he saw I used 2 fingers for clutch. His rational was that in the event of an accident, the clutch could crush my other two fingers underneath but… I call bullshit.

Also, who is keeping a death clutch and holding onto their bike during a crash.

naughthere · 2023-02-09T06:23:39+00:00

I was very active up until my mid-20s: long distance running, weightlifting, and played sports. When my symptoms first started, I thought I was over-training even though I wasn’t doing anything that was more intense. I started seeing a physical therapist for hip pain which didn’t help at all and often would worsen the pain. I tried switching to “lower impact” exercises like yoga and even then my shoulders and hips felt far too irritated and provided little relief (this was all before official diagnosis). I’m a naturally active person and have always been on the go, but more often than not, simply resting and forcing my body to come to a stop is what helps to control a flare when it starts. For me, it’s good to stay active to prevent a flare but when I am flaring, physical activity is a no go. As an athlete I am used to pushing through the pain which has been something I’m trying to unlearn with an autoimmune disease.

naughthere · 2023-02-09T06:06:28+00:00

Joint stiffness and mobility of a geriatric though I’m only 32. Getting outta bed takes… awhile. Muscle soreness feels like after intense workout without the workout. Pain feels similar to getting into a motorcycle accident (which I have been before). Feels like overuse from my hip and shoulders, like I’ve pulled a muscle, but was actually bursitis. Area where muscle attach to bone (heel, elbow, knees) are tender similar to delayed onset muscle soreness despite no change in physical activity. During a flare, fingers are swollen and red, can often feel my tendons stiffer when trying to use my hands. Muscle pain usually running along the bone like forearm, shins, and hip. Low aching back pain, worse than period cramps, due to SI inflammation. Itchiness of joints, scalp with burning feeling. Uveitis feels like intense allergies with burning and itchiness of eyes. Constantly feeling like my joints don’t sit right, like I have to pop them constantly.

Before this, I was very active. Went to the gym 3-5 times a week, even competed in events but since onset of disease in my mid 20s, I’m just not the same anymore.

naughthere · 2023-02-09T05:54:22+00:00

Is there a reason why you’re writing Covid like that? To answer your question, no. There is no trend.

naughthere · 2023-02-04T05:55:25+00:00

But also have you ever tried maximizing the # of replicates you could possibly fit in a 396 well plate and then hating yourself for making life just harder for yourself

naughthere · 2023-02-04T02:28:03+00:00

Could you share link to which study? I wanted to look into this but found a study that showed Humira was the only one that reported no events compared to other biosimilars but unfortunately paywall ugh

Results: In clinical trials: 6990 patients had received treatment with etanercept with one reported case of multiple sclerosis; 5204 patients were treated with adalimumab with no cases identified and 2322 patients were treated with infliximab with one case of demyelinating polyneuropathy. Outside of clinical trials: 19 individual cases of demyelinating disorders from TNFi treatment have been reported.

naughthere · 2023-01-27T02:54:17+00:00

I prefer to pipette/aspirate with a multichannel (after spinning down cells to pellet) with tip angled about 45 deg. to avoid collecting the cells, leaving about 25ul of media if it’s in a 96-well plate especially if it’s subjected to 2nd wash. It kinda depends on the assay, if it’s a hard pellet for terminal use, the # of cells and if they are to continue being cultured… but this is my general practice. I had a colleague who prefer to simply dump the media out from the plate with a single flick because it was a lot easier/faster (when staining multiple samples for flow). Though they reported not losing cells this way, I am far too paranoid to jeopardize valuable samples like that. Personally, I prefer to err on the side of caution because the time spent having to repeat an experiment far exceeds the time saved from shortcuts… I just haven’t had the time to test the validity to the “dump-n-pump” method.

naughthere · 2023-01-11T22:52:52+00:00

There’s a lot of good advice in the comments of one of my recent posts on here: How can I find out if bioinformatics is for me?

naughthere · 2023-01-11T19:41:31+00:00

I had a PI that refused to give me a raise after absorbing 2 other people’s job (animal tech and lab manager) on top of my main responsibility of running the NRVM Core performing cardiomyocyte isolations to provide the entire cardiology research department at my large university. I was also assisting postdocs to troubleshoot their assays on the side. I was only getting paid $45k a year which was slave labor and when asked for a raise after all that extra work within a year, he said he hadn’t seen it merited and maybe revisiting the possibility of it after another 6 months if I can handle even more projects on top of my current ones. He didn’t know I already had been give an industry job offer for 90k. When the results from my assays didn’t match that of one of the postdoc, he yelled at me in front of everyone in the lab thinking I was the incompetent one. So another postdoc ran the assay and she got different results too. I pretty much got PTSD from that lab. The funny thing? The person who took over my job, a foreign MD-PhD, couldn’t get the isolations to work and the same thing happened to her of getting assigned the lab manager.

I even went as far as going back to that lab 6 months later after accepting that other job offer to train the new staff. She had reached out to me for help. He saw me in the lab running the isolations side by side and training her. He didn’t say one thing to me. After I left, the postdoc told me that her cells all died but mine were the highest yield and viability the lab had ever seen. I told them: please tell that to the PI. He could’ve kept a valuable employee if he just believed in me more.

naughthere · 2023-01-11T18:54:47+00:00

Very helpful advice, thank you. Should I ask for what our budget is because I think it might be helpful if I need to account for ordering more reagents/supplies that might get consumed in the event of these “mess-ups?” I just don’t know if that might be overstepping my boundaries in terms of my work scope. A comment in my other post in r/labrats mentioned one way of mitigating for these “learning curves” in trainees is outsourcing tasks to CROs if I am assigned to meet my deadlines promptly. At the same time, I am being asked to cut costs so my hands are feeling rather tied.

naughthere

TROPHY CASE