Doctors Were Baffled, Teachers Were Skeptical, So Teen Makes An App To Track Lyme Disease

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9min 45sec

Thirteen-year-old Olivia Goodreau of Denver remembers feeling so sick at school she wasn't able to lift her head off her desk. She saw dozens of doctors, but they couldn't figure out what was wrong. Some thought she was making everything up, trying to get attention. One even suggested she might have Wilson’s Disease, a rare inherited disorder that causes copper to accumulate in your organs and it can be deadly.

She tells Colorado Matters that, finally, one of them diagnosed her condition as Lyme Disease -- something you’re very unlikely to contract in Colorado. And yet, Olivia's not the only one in the state to suffer from it. The experience led her and her mother to start a foundation to raise money for research into the condition, and help design an app called the TickTracker.