Begging to die, girl left bedbound after childhood insect bite
A YOUNG woman has been left begging to die after being left in constant pain by an illness she believes was caused by a childhood insect bite.
Kirsty Keep, 23, spends most of her time confined to bed after her health gradually worsened over the past 11 years.
Her ordeal began when she was bitten by an insect in her garden when she was 12.
She was taken to hospital when the bite mark quickly grew to the size of a hand.
Over the next decade, Miss Keep said she began getting sudden and severe facial pains, similar to ‘electric shocks’. She also started to suffer seizures.
Speaking from hospital, she said: ‘My bones feel like they’re being snapped and my muscles ripped. It feels like there’s someone inside me pulling my insides.’ She added: ‘I’m in chronic pain every day ... recently I stopped breathing and was put into an induced coma ... I do not know how much more my body can handle.’
Miss Keep was told she had lupus – a condition in which the immune system attacks healthy cells, tissue and organs.
The NHS admits lupus is ‘a complex and poorly under-
‘All she wants is a normal life’
stood’ condition. Symptoms include severe joint pain, tiredness and rashes, and 90 per cent of sufferers are women.
But Miss Keep’s family, from Maidstone, Kent, believe she is suffering from an undiagnosed illness linked to the insect bite. They now hope to raise £5,000 to take her to see a specialist in Germany.
Her mother Theresa described how her daughter felt she could not go on, and asked to go to Swiss suicide clinic Dignitas. ‘When she has bad days you feel like you’re watching her go,’ she said. ‘She’s begged me to take her to Switzerland and said she doesn’t want to do it any more.’
She believes her daughter was bitten by a tick in the family’s back garden and could have Lyme disease – a bacterial infection that has symptoms in common with lupus. But tests for this condition have come back negative.
‘Every few months, when she can’t stop being sick, she has to come into hospital and go on a drip because she’s dehydrated,’ her mother added. ‘All she wants is a normal life.’
Miss Keep’s sister Chloe has set up an online fundraising page at gofundme.com/8pnwn724.