I will go weep some more now.

I went to Florida last month for a very special event.
Our friend Christina defended her dissertation and received her doctorate in Biomedical Science, specializing in Immunology and Microbiology.

It was such a special moment that I have had a hard time processing it into words.

Christina contacted me about seven years ago, and was so sick she was considering dropping out of college.    She asked for my number and called me on the phone. 
She asked me if the gluten free diet really helped.   And I said Yes.   I said it is the First Thing that has truly helped.   It's not perfect, and I don't know why it works, but this is the first thing I have tried that actually makes it better.
It was a manic mess of a conversation (on both sides),  but I could tell she was truly intellectually gifted.   And that if her brain melted in college like mine did, it would be a huge tragedy and enormous loss for the world.

I begged her to try it.

She did, she got much better, and stayed in school and got her college degree.

Now, I would really like to take credit for that but I don't.
She had already halfway figured it out, and besides she has always been the cognitive driving force in our friendship.  I am a crazy old lady and I like to pretend I am smart, but she really is.  And she really wanted to know how Narcolepsy really works.  I just had a lifetime of experiencing what didn't work.  She never gave me any slack and made her own observations and pointed out contradictions and always had a research study to back herself up.  It was pretty annoying sometimes, but as it turns out, she was usually right.

After college, she went straight into graduate school to study intestines and metabolism, specifically Diabetes.   She was convinced it's in the guts.   And everything she learned there and all her research has supported that hypothesis.   Narcolepsy is a bit more complicated than either of us imagined in the beginning, but it is not just a brain problem, it's a metabolic disease closely related to diabetes and the intestines are definitely involved.   And experiencing those effects on the inside made her able to contribute a broader perspective of that process to her colleagues.
She's now going to work for a Gut-Brain Axis researcher, studying the effect of diet on behavior.   It sounds like the perfect place for her.   (Here, watch me eat this donut!)

Just getting a doctorate while suffering from Narcolepsy is a pretty significant achievement.
Hell, just keeping a job is usually impossible.
Getting a doctorate to fathom the intricacies of the illness while personally testing therapy ideas and surfing the freaky symptoms makes it a fractal victory squared.

I wept through the entire presentation.   And evening celebration.
I was terrible company, lost within myself, but I didn't care, because what I had witnessed was the Power of Science.   A practical Miracle.  
To say that out loud while sobbing would have sounded delusional.
But she should have been asleep, and her mind was as sharp and bright as a diamond.

This brilliant young woman is living proof this is real and mostly manageable.  And she now truly believes that it is pretty easily explainable and will be increasingly preventable.
She knows this stuff inside out  and upside down, and can help us tie all our research together.  And I am confident she won't let all our hard earned knowledge fall back into our memory holes.
No one will ever be able to tell us this is all our imagination, ever again.
That is everything that I dreamed of...

Congratulations to Christina L. Graves, PhD.
You are a truly extraordinary scientist.
And Glorious Viking Warrior.