CHESAPEAKE -- A simple bite from a tiny tick has turned into an eight-year physical struggle for one Chesapeake woman now battling Lyme Disease.

Video: Chesapeake woman battles Lyme Disease

Larger screen

Lyme Disease is a bacterial infection carried by a deer tick, so tiny, its smaller than the head of a match. Typical symptoms include a high fever, headache, fatigue, and a classic skin rash shaped like a bull’s-eye target.

Kimmie Carroll recalled having some of those symptoms after an outdoor church trip she attended after her freshman year at college.

“The first thing I noticed was a really high fever,” the Portsmouth Christian School valedictorian and former athlete recalled.

Lyme Disease can be treated successfully with a few weeks of antibiotics if caught early, but Carroll was misdiagnosed for five years. Eight years later, she lives at home with her parents in Chesapeake with the heart and joints of an 80-year-old.

“There’s not a part of me that doesn’t hurt, ever,” Carroll said.

She is now in advanced stages of the disease and is unable to work or finish her education. She takes more than a dozen medications a day and has a PIC line for treatment to her heart.

“I look back at all the dreams she had, and what we thought her life would be like, and this isn’t what we expected,” said her mother, Juanita Raike.

“I don’t want it to sound like I’ve given up hope,” said Carroll. “I feel like the things I’ve accomplished, I’m very proud of that.”