Billie Shepherd, from The Only Way is Essex, shared details of her health struggles after being diagnosed with Lyme disease in an interview with The Mirror.
The 35-year-old celebrity said she had struggled through “really tough” battles after contracting the condition, which is often accompanied by chronic fatigue and debilitating pain.
Shepherd, who was diagnosed earlier this year, said she had to rely heavily on her husband as the disease left her unable to “even get out of bed.”
“I was in bits. I was hysterically crying, because I was in so much pain,” she said. “It was hard for me to sit on the toilet without Greg helping me. It was so scary.”
“It’s been a really, really tough time,” Shepherd shared. “I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never been challenged with health issues; I’ve never had to face that. And people are dealing with things 10 times worse, but it has been awful.”
Shepherd explained that she began noticing the symptoms in January.
“One day I was fine, the next I woke up with really bad pains in my elbows and my arms,” she explained. “I thought I must have slept funny. I tried to ignore it, but as the days went on, the pain went all over my body to the point where I couldn’t even get out of bed. It was horrendous.”
“I had hard, red lumps all over my legs, which were so painful, a horrible rash on my back and extreme fatigue,” she recalled, explaining how she would go back and forth between doctors in hopes of finding the cause.
“But worst was the reactive arthritis — the most intense, awful pain in my joints. It was agony. My immune system was attacking the healthy tissue in my joints. I had so many blood tests but no one could figure it out. One doctor said she’d never seen anything like it. It was frustrating. This went on for about two months before we learnt it was Lyme’s,” she told the British newspaper.
Doctors would come to understand that Shepherd contracted the bacterial infection after suffering a tick bite up to three years before she began experiencing symptoms.
When tonsillitis weakened her immune system last year, the dormant bacteria reacted.
Justin Timberlake, Avril Lavigne, and Bella Hadid are among the other celebrities to suffer from the condition.
Lyme disease
Lyme disease is an infectious disease transmitted through parasitic bites (usually ticks) and is caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. The parasites are usually found in hidden places like the scalp, armpits and groin.
People with Lyme disease develop various symptoms at different levels of severity. Symptoms include headaches, chills, fatigue, muscle aches, and swollen lymph nodes.
An analysis of blood samples from 150,000 people found that more than 14% of people worldwide have contracted tick-borne Lyme disease, Walla reported in 2022.
Walla contributed to this report.