An untreated tick bite made her a “Bionic Woman”

Bradshaw’s knees began to fill with fluid. Her doctor diagnosed her with rheumatoid arthritis, which was the closest he could come to explaining her “mysterious” illness. Her hip had to be replaced at the age of 26.

“It [the disease] deteriorated every joint in my body,” says Bradshaw, now 29. “I was a shell of myself. It was terrifying.”

A specialist referred Bradshaw to a functional medicine doctor, who began asking questions about her upbringing. When she found out Bradshaw was from New Jersey, where blackleg ticks are very common, her doctor asked a question that changed everything.

“Have you ever been tested for Lyme disease?”

bionic woman

Fast forward a few years. Bradshaw has now reconstructed 16 of her joints and had eight joint replacements, all due to late detection of Lyme disease. She is preparing to have both elbows replaced, along with her second surgery on each hand, all of which should be completed within the next year. Hopefully she’ll take a break then. But there will likely be more surgeries to replace her joint replacement, she says.

If you remove the tick before 48 hours, you are unlikely to get the disease. Ticks can be as small as a Poppy, so it can be difficult to spot them. But an important sign of a tick bite is a rash that looks like a direct hit. If you get it early, Lyme disease can be treated and cured with antibiotics. But when detected late (like Bradshaw’s), treatment and recovery become much more difficult. Good news: A vaccine to treat Lyme disease is available for now in phase III clinical trials with drug manufacturers Pfizer and Walneva.

Contemplating what life might have been like if doctors had asked questions about her upbringing from an early age was one of the hardest things Bradshaw could come to terms with.

“I have severe medical trauma and I experience it every 3 months after another traumatic surgery,” she says. “It goes through the cycle of grief all the time.”

“I use humor as a coping mechanism,” she says. “I have to laugh about it. Because when I’m not laughing, I’m crying, and that’s healthier for me.”

New found purpose

Excellent healthcare is an important source of gratitude for Bradshaw. Her surgeries and medical care have resulted in over $1 million in medical expenses. most of which her insurance covered, and she paid for the rest out of her own pocket. Bradshaw often speaks publicly about the lack of access to quality health care for certain marginalized communities such as LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrant groups and people of color.

“I’m very fortunate that I had access to an improvement in my conditions,” she says. “Many people have no means to an end.”

While it could be easy to get angry or even upset over her late diagnosis, Bradshaw has shifted her focus to raising awareness of tick-borne diseases, which she has found “very healing”.

“I can look back and see all the things that were wrong in my journey and in that experience,” she says. “I say, ‘This is how it should be. And here’s how we can fix it.’ I want to be separate from that.”

Bradshaw recently co-founded a non-profit organization, Tick JEDI Coalition (JEDI stands for Juvenile Educational Defense Initiative), which strives to bring tick safety education into mainstream health science curricula.

“Children should learn this [tick safety] as a basic life skill, just like they learn how to wash their hands,” she says.

Meghan’s tips

To avoid late detection of Lyme disease or any other disease, Bradshaw shares these tips.

You know your body better than anyone.

“Doctors are incredibly brilliant, talented and knowledgable about many things. But at the end of the day, everyone is still human. There may be times when you have something that is beyond the scope of your knowledge. If the doctor you see is not the right doctor and you have access to medical care elsewhere, do your research and find someone who is a good fit for you.”