In 2008, Rachael French, a then-healthy 22-year-old, vacationed with friends in a cabin in the woods near Gaylord, Mich.
On the last day of the trip, while at a local water park, French said she felt the sting of chlorine on an open wound, looked down and noticed a small scab on her thigh. She figured it was a spider bite.
Within hours, she remembers feeling nauseated, sore and exhausted, but chalked it up to having a busy vacation. Things became a bit foggy from 
there, she said.
When she was admitted to urgent care, French had a 103-degree temperature, was lethargic and in pain all over her body, and had trouble forming sentences.
“The doctor asked if he could look at the bite, and when I showed him I noticed there was a ‘bulls-eye’ ring around the bite, which I hadn’t noticed before,” French said in an email. “It was so large it covered about half of my thigh.”
The doctor removed the scab and showed French where a tick had buried itself into her skin.
“Everything happened so fast,” she said. “One minute I’m in a cabin with a few friends having a great time, the next I’m being diagnosed with Lyme disease—an incurable disease.”
Most people will make a full recovery after a course of antibiotics, but between 10 to 20 percent of patients—including French—report lingering symptoms in a condition often called “chronic Lyme disease.”
Source: Scientific American