Lyme Aware

Girl With Tics Bucks Doctors, Blames Lyme Disease

On Dec. 19, 2011, Lori Brownell, who was 17 at the time, shot a YouTube video of herself as she talked about the tics she’d developed weeks earlier. She twitched her body, fluttered her fingers and made noises in her throat as she described her fainting and seizing episodes. “When I do this, there’s this weird feeling that goes up and down my spinal column,” she explained to the camera shortly before going into a fit of clapping. “If anyone wants to talk about this or if anyone’s starting it, I’ll be willing to talk,” she said, signing off on the video that would eventually get more than 250,000 hits. Read more or watch video.

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