Lucy Alexander, now 21, pictured with her partner Christian, is convinced she developed Lyme disease after being bitten at the age of nine. Picture: Dean Martin

She says she lost her adolescence to Lyme disease and is adamant she developed the controversial tick-borne illness after being bitten in SA, aged about nine.

Her first symptom – regular fainting – started when she was about 12. She was first diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.

But, by the time Ms Alexander was 15, she was suffering daily migraines and seizures – and that’s when she said medical professionals started to question her illness.

“When the seizures started, that’s when specialists started to think it was in my head,” Ms Alexander, now 21, said.

“They thought they were psychosomatic so I wasn’t aware that I was making it up.

“I remember them asking me to see psychiatrists and the psychiatrist asking me, ‘Do you want to be in hospital, do you like having all of this attention?’.”

Ms Alexander said she was diagnosed with Lyme disease when she was 19, after her doctor sent a blood sample to Californian laboratory, iGeneX, as well as an Australian laboratory.

She now takes about 50 different medicines a day, including anti-epileptic drugs, antidepressants and herbal supplements, and has spent about $20,000 travelling to access alternative treatments such as ozone therapy, hyperbaric oxygen therapy and hyperthermia treatment.

She is currently visiting a Malaysian clinic for more treatment.

Lucy Alexander, now 21, pictured with her partner Christian, is convinced she developed Lyme disease after being bitten at the age of nine. Picture: Dean MartinSource:News Corp Australia

Ms Alexander, of Panorama, and her family have run fundraising campaigns online to help pay for costly medicine and treatments, which she said have helped improve her condition.

“I was having seizures every day and now I haven’t had one in two years,” she said.

“I’m not in as much chronic pain. I have migraines maybe once a fortnight, when I used to have them every day.

“(But) none of it is covered by Medicare because it’s not a recognised illness in Australia.

“It’s about $300 a week for medicine and I have to work in order to make the money for those medicines, but I’m not well enough to be working.

“I would just like to see people feel validated and have their illness and symptoms recognised and understood.”

A spokeswoman for Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Brendan Murphy, said patients who acquired classical Lyme disease from endemic areas overseas can be diagnosed and treated in Australia.

“The cost of pathology testing and antimicrobial treatment is mostly covered via the Medicare Benefits Schedule and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme,” she said.

The spokeswoman said some overseas practitioners offered ozone, hyperbaric oxygen and hyperthermia treatments but “these approaches do not have a sufficiently sound evidence base for

Australian medical practitioners to support” and therefore could not be subsidised.

Originally published as Robbed of her youth by a single bite