From Bed-Bound to Ms Great Britain: Kirstie Haysman’s Lyme Disease Recovery Story
Kirstie Haysman went from being bed-bound, wheelchair-dependent, unable to care for herself, and wondering whether she would ever recover to walking across a pageant stage and becoming Ms Great Britain 2025/26.
But the crown represents much more than a pageant victory.
In this deeply personal episode of the Tick Boot Camp Podcast, Kirstie shares the decades-long health journey that preceded it: unexplained symptoms beginning in childhood, multiple diagnoses, years of immunosuppressive treatment, debilitating joint and neurological symptoms, frightening intrusive thoughts, psychiatric hospitalization, and encounters with more than 40 doctors before Lyme disease finally entered the conversation.
Kirstie takes listeners through the moment a stranger in a hospital waiting room asked a life-changing question — “Do you think you’ve got Lyme disease?” — and how that question ultimately led her to Mexico, Dr. Omar Morales, testing for Lyme and other tick-borne infections, and the validation she had spent years searching for.
Her story does not end with diagnosis or antimicrobial treatment. Kirstie describes the many approaches she explored, the enormous financial and emotional cost of chronic illness, and why nervous-system regulation, self-hypnosis, visualization, purpose, and changing the story she told herself eventually became important pieces of her personal recovery.
Today, Kirstie is using the visibility that comes with being Ms Great Britain to advocate for people with Lyme disease and other complex chronic illnesses — including her own daughter.
Years of Symptoms and Misdiagnosis
Looking back, Kirstie remembers being an unwell child with chronic exhaustion, recurring infections, severe “growing pains,” insomnia, low iron, and other unexplained symptoms.
Her health deteriorated significantly as an adult.
After testing positive for ANA following the birth of her daughter, Kirstie says doctors initially suspected lupus. Over the years, she received or was considered for numerous diagnoses, including rheumatoid arthritis, connective tissue disease, Raynaud’s, fibromyalgia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, and other conditions.
She was treated with steroids for approximately 12 years and later received additional immunosuppressive medications. Instead of recovering, Kirstie says she became progressively sicker.
Eventually, the joints in her hands became so damaged that she could no longer perform her work as a chiropodist. She lost her business, her independence, and ultimately her ability to care for herself.
When Lyme Disease Affected Her Brain
Some of the most difficult parts of Kirstie’s illness were neurological and psychiatric.
She describes severe insomnia, panic, OCD symptoms, brain fog, intrusive thoughts, overwhelming anxiety, and periods when she felt as though her own mind was no longer under her control.
At one of her lowest points, she entered a psychiatric hospital because she and her family believed she was experiencing a severe mental health crisis.
Kirstie emphasizes an important distinction: she wanted to live, but was terrified by intrusive thoughts telling her to harm herself.
Her experience is an important reminder that patients experiencing psychiatric or neurological symptoms deserve to be heard, taken seriously, and thoroughly evaluated rather than dismissed.
The Stranger Who Changed Everything
After collapsing during another hospital visit, Kirstie says she felt dismissed by a physician who characterized her symptoms as attention-seeking.
Then another woman in the waiting room approached her with a question Kirstie had never been asked before:
Could this be Lyme disease?
Kirstie had barely heard of Lyme.
She went home and began researching. As she read patient stories and symptom lists, she recognized experiences she had been struggling to explain for years.
When she subsequently requested Lyme testing, Kirstie says she encountered resistance because she did not remember a tick bite or an erythema migrans rash.
That experience ultimately pushed her outside the healthcare system she had relied upon throughout her life.
Traveling to Mexico for Answers
The woman Kirstie met in the hospital was preparing to travel to Mexico for Lyme disease care and encouraged Kirstie to speak with Dr. Omar Morales.
That conversation changed the direction of Kirstie’s journey.
Kirstie describes Dr. Morales as one of the first physicians who listened to her entire history and made her feel that her experiences were real and worth investigating.
She traveled to Mexico, where she says specialty testing identified Lyme disease along with infections including Bartonella, Babesia, and Anaplasma.
Receiving those results brought two very different emotions.
There was relief: after years of searching, Kirstie finally felt she had an explanation.
But there was also fear. She had spent nights reading stories from people who remained chronically ill and suddenly wondered whether she would ever recover — and how she could possibly afford the care she believed she needed.
Tick Boot Camp previously interviewed Dr. Morales about his approach to complex Lyme disease in Lyme Mexico: An Interview with Dr. Omar Morales.
Stem Cells, Plasmapheresis, Ozone and Antibiotics
Kirstie ultimately pursued treatment at another facility in Mexico, where she reports receiving interventions including stem cell procedures, plasmapheresis, and ozone therapy.
She describes experiencing meaningful improvement, including increased energy and changes in the mobility of her severely affected hands.
After returning to the United Kingdom, however, her health declined again.
Kirstie later found a UK physician who prescribed an extended combination antibiotic protocol. She credits that period of treatment with helping resolve some of her most frightening intrusive thoughts and neurological symptoms, although gastrointestinal complications eventually led her to discontinue antibiotics.
Over the course of her illness, Kirstie estimates that she spent approximately £70,000 pursuing recovery.
She experimented with dramatically different diets and explored numerous conventional, integrative, and alternative approaches.
Her experience illustrates a reality familiar to many people with complex chronic illness: the search for answers can become financially, physically, and emotionally consuming.
From Wheelchair and Bed-Bound to Rebuilding Her Life
Despite everything she had tried, Kirstie eventually reached another devastating low.
She describes periods when she could barely move, severe pain throughout her body, swollen joints, weakness and loss of sensation in her legs, bladder problems, and dependence on carers for basic daily activities.
She could no longer work.
She was missing important moments in her daughter’s childhood.
And she felt that the person she had once been had disappeared.
That was when Kirstie began examining another part of recovery: her nervous system and the way she thought about her body.
Primal Trust, Nervous-System Regulation and Self-Hypnosis
Kirstie discovered the work of Dr. Cathleen King and Primal Trust, which introduced her to concepts involving nervous-system regulation, limbic system retraining, and moving the body away from a persistent state of perceived danger.
This became an important shift in Kirstie’s personal recovery strategy.
Rather than continually reinforcing the message that her body was broken and needed another intervention, she began practicing self-hypnosis and visualization.
From bed, Kirstie imagined herself walking.
She imagined herself healthy.
And she imagined herself standing on the Miss Great Britain stage while an audience applauded.
She even played recordings of crowds cheering while visualizing that future.
Kirstie is careful to describe this as part of a much larger journey that also included extensive medical treatment. Looking back, she believes she encountered nervous-system work at the point when she was finally ready to embrace it.
Learn more about nervous-system regulation and chronic illness in Tick Boot Camp’s interview with Dr. Cathleen King: Primal Trust.
“Bed Bound to Beauty Queen”
Years earlier, Kirstie had competed in Miss Great Britain after becoming Miss Hertfordshire.
When her illness later became severe and her story received widespread media attention, Miss Great Britain reached out with a message of encouragement: if she recovered enough, she should consider returning.
For someone lying in bed wondering what her future would look like, that invitation became a goal.
Kirstie created a social media identity around “Bed Bound to Beauty Queen” and gave herself 365 days to get back onto the pageant stage.
Progress came gradually.
First came standing.
Then a Zimmer frame.
Then walking outside.
Then a walking stick.
Finally, Kirstie returned to the stage.
In 2024, only months after leaving her wheelchair, she returned to Miss Great Britain and placed second runner-up in the Ms Great Britain category.
One year later, she returned again.
This time, Kirstie Haysman became Ms Great Britain 2025/26.
For Kirstie, the crown represented the future she had visualized during some of the darkest days of her illness.
Turning the Crown Into Lyme Disease Advocacy
Kirstie promised that if she recovered, she would use her voice to help other people facing Lyme disease.
She has made that promise a central part of her reign as Ms Great Britain.
Her advocacy has included speaking at the ILADS European Scientific Conference, traveling to the United States with fellow UK Lyme advocate Hannah Green, visiting Lyme, Connecticut and the Plum Island area, participating in Lyme community events, and attending the Lyme Warrior 10th Anniversary Gala, where Tick Boot Camp first met Kirstie in person.
She and Hannah also spent Lyme Disease Awareness Month wearing green every day as a conversation starter about Lyme disease.
Kirstie has additionally launched a UK Parliament petition calling for a review of Lyme disease testing, part of her effort to encourage earlier recognition and reduce the kind of diagnostic journey she experienced.
Lymelight: Making Disability Visible
Kirstie has also collaborated with mobility-aid company NeoWalk on Lymelight, a clear acrylic walking stick featuring vivid lime-green stripes.
The design grew out of Kirstie’s experience with Lyme disease and her belief that mobility aids do not have to be hidden.
For Kirstie, the walking stick that once represented disability can instead become a visible conversation starter about Lyme disease, resilience, and identity.
Learn more about the Lymelight walking stick from NeoWalk.
Lyme Disease Across Generations
One of the most emotional themes in Kirstie’s story is her concern about Lyme disease across generations of her family.
She discusses the unexplained illnesses experienced by her grandmother and mother, questions whether she may have been exposed before birth, and shares that her daughter has also been diagnosed with Lyme disease.
Kirstie believes congenital transmission may help explain portions of her family’s medical history and says advocating for her daughter is one of the reasons she remains so committed to Lyme disease awareness.
The conversation explores these possibilities as part of Kirstie’s personal and family history rather than assuming that every proposed transmission route discussed during the interview has been established in her individual case.
Finding Purpose After Chronic Illness
Perhaps the most powerful part of Kirstie’s story is not the crown itself.
It is what the crown represents.
Chronic illness took away her career, independence, mobility, confidence, and the identity she had built for herself.
Recovery required Kirstie to build a new one.
She now describes herself not simply as someone who has been sick, but as someone who can use what she experienced to help others feel seen.
She has retrained in hypnotherapy and is developing her work around trauma, limiting beliefs, nervous-system regulation, and pain management. She has also written Bed Bound to Beauty Queen, a children’s story inspired by disability, hope, and pursuing dreams despite enormous obstacles.
Her message to the Lyme community is simple:
A diagnosis does not have to determine your destiny.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn
- How Kirstie went from Miss Hertfordshire and pageantry to severe chronic illness and eventually Ms Great Britain
- Why she believes symptoms of illness may have been present since childhood
- How lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and other diagnoses became part of her medical journey
- What happened after years of steroids and immunosuppressive treatment
- How severe insomnia, OCD symptoms, anxiety and intrusive thoughts affected her life
- Why she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital
- How a stranger in a hospital waiting room first introduced her to Lyme disease
- Why not remembering a tick bite or bullseye rash became an obstacle to testing
- How Kirstie eventually connected with Dr. Omar Morales in Mexico
- Her reported diagnoses involving Lyme disease, Bartonella, Babesia and Anaplasma
- Her experiences with antibiotics, stem cells, plasmapheresis, ozone and other interventions
- The financial burden of pursuing treatment for complex chronic illness
- Why Kirstie eventually focused more heavily on nervous-system regulation
- How Primal Trust, self-hypnosis and visualization became part of her personal recovery strategy
- How she progressed from bed-bound to a Zimmer frame, walking stick and pageant stage
- Why becoming Ms Great Britain was about far more than winning a crown
- How she is using her title to raise Lyme disease awareness internationally
- Her advocacy around Lyme disease testing and congenital Lyme
- Why purpose, identity, community and hope became essential parts of her recovery
More From Tick Boot Camp
Explore more stories of recovery, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and people working to improve understanding of Lyme and tick-borne disease on the Tick Boot Camp Podcast.
For listeners who are struggling to understand Lyme disease testing and why different tests can produce different results, visit the Tick Boot Camp guide to Lyme disease testing.
