A woman who spent over a decade struggling with painful symptoms and had to wait helplessly as her health declined has finally discovered the cause—she never would have predicted it.

Laura Schaeffer was excited to start a new chapter 12 years ago, as she moved into a 100-year-old farmhouse and was also starting a new job. But that joy was quickly curtailed when she began experiencing symptoms of a urinary tract infection (without having an infection), unexplained fevers, fatigue, and mental fog.

She was in her early twenties at the time, and yet she felt utterly debilitated. Just one alcoholic drink would leave her feeling violently ill, and she kept catching viruses. She couldn't work out why she felt so ill, but Schaeffer, of Pennsylvania, told Newsweek that she "blamed stress, a new

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