A tick bite that she doesn't even remember has all but ruined 31-year-old Laura MacLeod's life.
She has likely had Lyme disease since she was a child, but it wasn't until she was a young professional and suddenly suffering from a confusing but life-altering set of symptoms: debilitating fatigue, brain fog, aches, pains and even seizures.
But that one answer was the beginning of a continually frustrating search for something, anything, to bring Laura relief.
She has tried everything from bee stings to injections of ozone, but Laura's body just keeps deteriorating further and further.
Her next hope is to fly to Germany for the most dangerous treatment yet, because, here in the US, many health officials and doctors deny that the chronic Lyme could be the cause of Laura's symptoms.
Laura MacLeod, 31, has been in and out of hospitals for everything from seizures to cognitive symptoms and a life-threatening antibiotic resistant infection. She has Lyme disease, but every treatment she has tried has failed, leaving her desperate and trying unproven protocols
Before her diagnosis, Laura was a fit and active woman, frequently surfing in California or around the world as part of her many travels
Lyme disease is present in ticks in much of North America (including the US and Canada), Europe (more prominently eastern and central than western) and northern Asia, though forms from different places are not identical.
Chronic Lyme disease is not officially recognized.
But countries like France, Canada, Switzerland and Germany have taken a more proactive stance on the disease than the US has.
'Really, the controversy stems from the unknowns' about the disease, says Tulane University Lyme researcher Dr Monica Morici-Embers.
'If we had some answers and we could prove this, that or the other, it wouldn't be controversial, but we can't and the disease is not simple.'
As Lyme disease becomes more common around the world, France and Canada have created national plans to address tick-borne disease including Lyme.
The US sees at least as many cases of Lyme each year as either country does.
French researchers are looking into how tick bites themselves may lead to chronic illness.
Meanwhile in the US, much research in the US focuses on the basics of the ticks that carry it and how the infection is transmitted.
There are a handful of clinics that specialize in Lyme in the US as well as in other countries.
A German clinic using hyperthermia - heating of the whole body - to treat Lyme has gained notoriety after several people claimed it cured them.
The treatment is offered by at least one US clinic as well, but is only FDA approved for treating certain cancers and considered dangerous.
On social media, Laura appears alternately in photos as vibrant and adventurous and deathly ill.
In most images, she's globe-trotting or grinning in the middle of a crowd of friends.
But in others, she's in a hospital bed, nearly obscured by wires, tubes and machines monitoring her precarious health.
This is what chronic Lyme disease looks like.
Its network of possible symptoms are so far-flung and variable from person-to-person that trying to treat them is like playing whack-a-mole.
The only proven treatment for Lyme disease itself is a course of antibiotics that eradicates the infection. But it only works if it's administered in the early stages of the disease.
That was hardly the situation for Laura.
'I think I've had Lyme since I was a kid. I went to high school in Connecticut and I think it started then because I was sick, but not sick enough to really make a big deal of it. I was just a sick kid,' Laura says.
Fast-forward to her adulthood, and suddenly Laura's eyelashes had all fallen out. Her body was mottled with rashes, she could hardly keep food down and was seizing regularly.
'I saw specialists in neurology, chiropractors, orthopedists, everyone I could think of, but they didn't know what to do. No one really had any suggestions and no one could find anything clearly wrong,' she says.
An orthopedic surgeon, with no other answers suggested exploratory neck surgery to find an unknown unknown.
Desperate though she was, that was a step too far for Laura.
Like many other doctors she'd seen, the orthopedic surgeon suggested that if there wasn't a problem showing up on less invasive tests, Laura's issue might be more mental than physical.
She opted to see a psychologist, in the hopes that perhaps her wide array of symptoms might be stress-related.
She has been an avid hiker and camper. The dry air of the desert brings Laura some relief, but she says she should currently be on bed rest
'I thought I must just be stressed out and this is all in my head, I'm just not adjusting well' to her new busy life working in advertising in New York.
'I spent almost two years in therapy before the doctor was like, "I think you're just really sick,"' Laura recalls.
Specialists of every other kind told Laura her problem must be mental, and her mental health provider told her it must be physical.
Laura was sick, and stuck without any answers. It would take her to work out why.
'I WOULD GET LOST ALL THE TIME': LYME DISEASE 'HIDES' FROM DIAGNOSTIC TESTS AND TREATMENTS - MAKING LAURA FEEL LIKE SHE WAS GOING CRAZY
Lyme is a sneaky disease.
The bacteria that causes it 'hides,' as Tulane University bacteriology and parasitology professor Dr Monica Morici-Embers explains.
This makes it both hard to test for and to treat, and is part of the reason that one person's symptoms of Lyme disease can be wildly different from another's.
'It doesn't stay in the blood very long after the tick feeds,' she says, 'it gets disseminated throughout the body through the bloodstream and hides in collagenous tissues, like the heart and even the brain, [and then] it is no longer detectable,' Dr Morici-Embers says.
For Laura, the mysterious changes to her brain were among the most agonizing symptoms.
'I had these cognitive symptoms - I used to organize large amounts of information for a living, but I was having trouble reading simple guidelines and communicating. I couldn't think of the right words, I would get lost all the time,' Laura says.
'I would be trying to bring my keys out to my car, and realize I was holding, like, my dog.'
Not everyone with Lyme has these cognitive symptoms, and not all cognitive symptoms indicate Lyme - but they can.
Laura's Lyme disease began to really affect her life while she was working in advertising in New York. At first, she first blamed the stress of her high pressure job - then she had a seizure
When other specialists couldn't diagnose her, Laura decided to try therapy to help her 'adjust' to life in New York. After nearly two years, the therapist said 'maybe you're just really sick'
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that Lyme can cause brain tissue swelling - also known as encephalitis - but that this is uncommon.
Patients who do have this rare complication may be sleepy or lethargic, moody or confused. Some have marked personality or behavioral changes, cognitive changes, even hallucinations or seizures.
Laura had all of the above, plus periodic rashes stretching across her chest and neck, aches and pains everywhere from her jaw to her joints, and she kept vomiting.
A bullseye rash is the most common, typically the first, and certainly most clear identifier of Lyme disease, but from there the condition's effects become unpredictable.
Dr Morici-Embers, who studies Lyme in animals, says that this unpredictability needs to be recognized as part of the nature of the disease - not a reason to deny its existence.
'I've seen what the infection looks like in animal models, I've seen inflammation in and around the peripheral nerves, which would cause any number of symptoms,' she explains.
'Not every animal will have the same set of signs in their tissues of infection and some will have moderate-level inflammation in areas where it can cause potentially complex symptoms.'
Depending on the region of the US, different species of tick carry Lyme disease. But cases are relatively rare outside of the Northeast.
Yet when Laura did some online digging, it kept bringing her back to Lyme - it seemed to her the
