After the eleventh doctor couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, Ashley Courtney broke down sobbing in the shower in May 2021.

She had been suffering through frightening heart palpitations, painful hives and a poison-ivy-like rash all over her body for more than a year — including while she was pregnant with her third child.

“I was itching to a point where I felt mentally crazy,” said Courtney, a 37-year-old owner of CrossFit Fredericksburg in Virginia. “It would get worse and worse. I felt like I was allergic to existing.”

“I thought, if I don’t get help soon, this is gonna kill me,” she said.

After months of the baffling health nightmare, her hairdresser mentioned that she should look into a little-known tick-borne disease that causes an allergic reaction to some meat products

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