Stroking a panda gave me Lyme disease, says champion swimmer
A GIFTED swimmer caught a potentially fatal disease when she stroked a panda in China.
At the time, Sophie Ward was 14 and had dreams of becoming an Olympic athlete.
But she was left with Lyme disease, which has blighted her life ever since.
Miss Ward, now 24, believes she was bitten by a tick living in the panda’s fur. She suffered from symptoms including recurring infections, migraines, food intolerance and sore throats.
Over the next few years her health began to deteriorate so rapidly she had to drop out of college after becoming too weak to carry her bag.
Despite visiting doctors on numerous occasions, they were unable to get to the bottom of her illness and it took years before she received a diagnosis.
She was referred to a specialist centre in January last year, where medical staff believed she may have been suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome derived from Lyme disease.
Two months later, a consultant traced her symptoms back to the 2008 family holiday in Beijing, where she went with her father Michael, 60, mother Julie, 55, and brother Alex, 21.
‘I just burst into tears,’ Miss Ward said. ‘I had known for years that I was not well and I felt no one had believed me.
‘My Olympic dreams being dashed was heartbreaking. A bite from a tick completely changed my life.’
The promising swimmer, who was a national champion at the time and on the London 2012 World Class Programme – a prestigious coaching scheme for promising athletes – stroked the panda for a ‘once in a lifetime experience’. However, she immediately started to feel ill.
She said: ‘I just felt really poorly and was sweating uncontrollably.
‘We went back to the hotel and I saw the doctors. They said it was a fever and gave me two days of antibiotics.’
But the medicine didn’t help, and it wasn’t until four years later, at 18, that she remembers developing further symptoms. She said: ‘I was getting severe pains in my muscles and my joints. I kept going to the doctors but they treat all these things separately.
‘They sent me for lots of scans but I kept getting told everything was fine. People start questioning you so you start questioning yourself.’ Miss Ward, from Garstang, Lancashire, had to give up swimming in December 2009 as her coaches didn’t want to cause her any further suffering. She had swum for Lancashire, England and Great Britain at the European Youth Olympics when she was 13 – and even won a gold medal.
She said: ‘It was getting to the point where the pain was so bad, I was starting to hate and dread the sport I used to love. I did not want to hate it as it had been my life and my everything, and I loved it. But it was taking its toll on my health so I had to give it up.’
After finally being given the diagnosis, Miss Ward also discovered she had contracted Coxsackievirus. China had an outbreak of the virus in 2007, with 22 fatalities linked to Coxsackie, which can lead to viral meningitis.
Miss Ward believes the tick may have been carrying that infection, too. Her consultant told her a sudden illness she suffered while in China was likely to have been early symptoms of Lyme disease.
She said: ‘It wasn’t until I was examined and we went through all my illnesses and travel experiences that we pinpointed China.’
Many patients with early symptoms of Lyme disease develop a circular red skin rash around a tick bite, described as a ‘bullseye rash’.
However, some sufferers, including Miss Ward, do not develop the rash and have flu-like symptoms in the early stages. Miss Ward is now using herbal treatment as her body has become too weak to take antibiotics. Her health varies and she must use a wheelchair for long journeys.
She has taken a role as an ambassador for charity Lyme Disease UK.
‘Olympic dreams were dashed’