The day after my brother’s wedding I shot down to San Diego to meet Rachel Riggs and a doctor with ME / CFS. Rachel, who has turned into a volunteer patient coordinator had enrolled me in Naviaux’s next metabolomics study. (Resistance, I quickly surmised, was futile – not that I was putting up any.) Rachel chatted away on the phone with another potential participant as we drove down to Naviaux’s lab. I was one of the last ones to give blood.
After I gave a surprising small amount of blood we tromped down the hall to meet with Dr. Naviaux in his workroom, the industrial looking pipes overhead bringing back memories of college labs in the past. Ducking into one lab Rachel showed me two $500,000 dollar mass spectometer machines each the size of a large microwave.