Sylvia Janicki doesn’t remember being bitten by a tick in 2014, but she did develop a bullseye rash—a hallmark sign of Lyme disease, the most common (and feared) infectious disease spread by ticks in the United States. Within 24 hours of the rash’s appearance, a doctor diagnosed the 29-year-old Seattle resident with Lyme. She was swiftly treated with a four-week standard dose of antibiotic therapy, which cured her flu-like symptoms.

Until it didn’t. A few months later, her headaches, fever, and fatigue came rushing back, along with head pressure and numbness and tingling in her legs. “I had a hard time walking half a mile to the market, which was alarming since, at that point, I had been running four to five miles a day regularly,” Janicki says. “That’s when the confusion amongst my doctors started.”

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