Kelly Osbourne secretly battled Lyme disease
Kelly Osbourne was "scared s**tless" when she was diagnosed with Lyme disease.
The 32-year-old star was bitten by a tick in 2004 and suffered "travelling pain" around her body for years afterwards, culminating in being diagnosed with epilepsy after suffering a seizure in 2013.
But Kelly – who has endured four stints in rehab – reached "breaking point" after being given a variety of different medications that left her feeling like a "zombie" and called in alternative medicine practitioner Philip Battiade at Infusio, who had treated her brother Jack for Multiple Sclerosis (MS), for help.
In an extract from her memoir ‘There Is No F***ing Secret: Letters From a Badass Bitch’ published in Us Weekly magazine, she recalled: "When I met with Philip, I assured him that I hadn’t used unprescribed drugs in years and that I thought I had Lyme disease. I had started entering my symptoms into online quizzes, and the results kept coming back Lyme disease. For the first time, someone listened to me, and I got tested. The results were positive: I had stage III neurological Lyme disease. I was relieved to finally know what was going on, but I was also scared s**tless."
The former ‘Fashion Police’ star sought stem cell treatment and was overjoyed to feel more like her old self after just two weeks.
She continued: "I got on a plane and flew to Philip’s treatment center in Germany. I started stem cell therapy.
"Rather than trying to kill off the disease with antibiotics, this treatment worked to strengthen my immune system so my body could fight off and get rid of the disease on its own, which is a much more complete and lasting cure. I stayed for two weeks.
"I was experiencing emotions and feelings again. I’d been in a diseased and doctor-approved drug-induced haze for so long that I didn’t know what it was like to be happy or sad or in pain."
Kelly has concealed her battle with the disease because she was concerned she’d be jumping on the bandwagon of the "trendy" condition and claimed there are people in the public eye who falsely claim to have the debilitating illness.
She wrote: "I’ve kept quiet about my Lyme disease, not only for fear of pharmaceutical companies coming after me because of the cure I found in Germany but also because it seems like the trendy disease to have right now, and I’m tired of seeing sad celebrities play the victim on the cover of weekly mags.
"Since I know firsthand how awfully debilitating it is, I know who really has it and who is just trying to prolong their 15 minutes. I don’t understand how anyone could think that the life you have to live with Lyme disease is glamorous."
