CD19: NoLa & Other Good Things

Met with some of my gal friends over at NoLa last night for drinks and grub. While the drinks could have used a kick in the pants (lightweight me didn't even have so much as a buzz after two pint sized mojitos) the food was tasty and the dessert tray quite yummy. Although I'm allergic to milk, that didn't stop me from chowing down a helping of the bread pudding. But more than anything, it was great to connect with these ladies.

On the IF highway...we had our "Your Cycle Failed" discussion with Dr. Moustache on Tuesday. He basically said that we've put in 17 embryos and not a one implanted...and this defies odds even at my age. We would have at least expected to see implantation then a chemical or even a sac, but since we've seen nothing he says we have "implantation failure". D'oh. I kind of knew that. He said we should get second opinions on this which, to me, felt kind of like him cutting us loose but I do know that he wants us to be sure that we want to continue with him. (On this matter, I don't, but J does. I say J does cuz he's being cheap about Dr. Pompy charging $1600 more for the same procedure: IVF). I am also sure that he knows that we sent our records to Dr. Pompy's, and is thinking we're not coming back anyways. Or maybe he doesn't want my screwed up uterus to mess up his stats any more than they already have?

What else?

Dr. Pompy's office (aka, Dr. Next) confirmed that they have received all of my records from Dr. Moustache. I forwarded off all of my other bloodwork from Dr. G, and the immune work from Dr. S's office. Dr. Pompy, like all of the other REs are in Lousianna this weekend at a conference. If you are wondering where your RE is this week, now you know.

Yesterday morning I had a chat with the very sweet Dr. C in Chicago. She is doing a study on intralipids and whether they help to suppress NKs in women with elevated NKs. It was a short 30 minute conversation, but she was well organized and seemed to have gotten just about everything out of me in that short time. She'll be sending me a styrofoam container with vacutainers...I'll do a draw at Dr. S's and forward the blood to Millenova laboratory for testing. Essentially they'll be looking to see if intralipids can suppress my NKs in the test tube. If they DO, then I'm off to Chicago for an infusion, or two. If they do NOT, then I won't be infusing intralipids.

We already know that IVIg doesn't suppress my NKs in the test tube (in vitro), so if intralipids follow in the footsteps of IVIg, I'll only be left with LIT to get my NKs under control....and this brings me to update you on the status of my mad science experiment:

Centrifuge #1 arrived a few days ago. It's a Hermle Z-230 with variable speed settings, 60 minute timer, brake, and holds 8-15ml centrifuge tubes. It has a fixed angle rotor so it's not ideal. But it'll work in a jiffy for separating the RBCs from the plasma/PBMCs (peripheral blood mononuclear cells).

What IS ideal, however, is the Sorvall GLC-2, that I just picked up on Ebay for $80 plus shipping. It has a nifty HL-4 horizontal rotor (worth $475) which takes Sorvall 598 buckets (buying these in Canada for $62/4 buckets update: they wanted $62 PER BUCKET, not for four buckets! Forget THAT! I can buy a complete centrifuge on Ebay with buckets for $299!), each bucket can hold six 15ml centrifuge tubes. So it can spin more all at a time PLUS it has swinging buckets for getting my serum to separate into rbc, gradient, PBMC, and plasma layers. Horizontal layers that is, without disturbing these precious layers when I remove the tubes. The other centrifuge, as I said, has a "fixed angle rotor". So the tubes goes in on an angle and the stuff inside layers out into angles. That's okay for the first centrifugation, but not for the second as it's more "liquidy", and that lymphocyte layer needs to come out undisturbed.

I'm not sure why I didn't think of that before, but it means that I now have two centrifuges.

What am I going to do with two centrifuges you might wonder? Well, the ex, Dr. S, is a chemistry professor at a SoCal college, so I've warned him that I'll be making a donation to his laboratory. I paid $75 for the first centrifuge (including shipping) but a centrifuge of this quality is worth about $1000 to $1200. I am stunned that the folks selling these things on Ebay just don't know how to market a centrifuge. They'll take a picture of the outside of the centrifuge, tell you it has the rotor, but do they show you the rotor or describe it? NO!!! So frustrating! It's also partly Ebay's fault for not having subcategories for microcentrifuges, bench centrifuges, or floor centrifuges, and further separations beyond there. But it does mean that I was able to get some very good buys there.

So that first centrifuge is going to be a very good tax write off. :) In fact, I think all of this equipment will be going south once this lab experiment is over.

You know what I find amusing through all of this is that the ex hasn't even bothered to ask me what the hell I am doing with centrifuges at HOME. I don't know if it was the plasmodial slime mold I had growing on the top of the refrigerator or the cadaver cat I brought home from the Anatomy lab...but I guess he kind of knows better than to ask.