Thank you for the kind words! I've been wanting to do this research precisely because of firsthand experience with how hard chronic illness can be, and I'm hoping to attack it with a systems approach.

I haven't seen that website before, but it sounds pretty accurate from what I've heard. It's insane how high of a mountain needs to be climbed just to catch up to the state-of-the-art, and how much work is needed to push through to figure out something truly new.

Here's to making the world a better place!

I view the difficulty/breadth and depth of knowledge necessary to begin a PhD as a tribute to humanity's successes (and hope to embark upon my own after retirement, though it'll be in CNC machining).