While the World Was Talking About Lyme Disease, One Mother Set Out to Build a Better Answer

Tammy and Jessica

In recent years, Lyme disease has been making a bigger buzz. Social media channels and news outlets are flooded with talks about a new vaccine, tick-born allergies to meat, and the ever-famous bullseye rash. As Lyme Disease becomes a more well-known disease, the conversations around Lyme Disease are starting to shift. More people are sharing stories of delayed diagnoses. Families are speaking out about months—or even years—spent searching for answers. And researchers continue working to better understand a disease that can present differently from one patient to the next.

Yet behind the scenes as Lyme disease became part of a national conversation, it had already changed one family's life.

This is the story of Tammy Crawford—not a CEO or entrepreneur looking for the next big idea, but a mother desperately trying to help her daughter.

It Started with Jessica

Tammy had more than 25 years of experience in leadership across clinical diagnostics, healthcare sales and nonprofit organizations, yet it was her daughter Jessica’s diagnosis with Lyme disease that sparked Tammy’s desire to change the story for patients diagnosed with Lyme disease. 

Jessica was a healthy 19-year-old away at college and enjoying her first experience of independence. But slowly, everything changed. It started quietly. Pain in her hands and feet became so severe she struggled to hold a book or even grip the steering wheel of her car. At first, the family wondered if it might be related to her brother's Type 1 diabetes or another autoimmune condition. But every test came back normal.

Meanwhile, Jessica kept getting worse.

Soon, she was experiencing neurological symptoms, memory problems, heart palpitations, extreme muscle fatigue, sensitivity to light and sound, insomnia, and overwhelming exhaustion. There were days she had to crawl to the bathroom because she didn't have the strength to walk. Eventually, she found herself in a wheelchair. She had every single symptom of Lyme disease, but they just didn’t have a diagnosis.

Over the next ten months, the family did everything they were told to do. They saw specialists. Rheumatologists. Neurologists. They underwent MRIs, spinal taps, and countless lab tests. Every appointment brought hope that the next doctor would finally have an answer. Instead, the questions kept multiplying.

Tammy recalls the frustration of getting answers and the painstaking questions doctors were asking her. “At one point, Jessica was pulled into a room away from me and asked if she felt safe at home. They thought that I was making this up, or somehow making her sick. No one believed that she really was sick.”

Knowing Something Was Wrong

One of the hardest parts wasn't simply watching Jessica suffer. It was knowing something was terribly wrong while struggling to find anyone who could explain why.

Finally, one doctor recommended a test for Lyme disease. Jessica not only tested positive for every band, but the doctor said it was the most positive test he had ever seen. She started on antibiotics and they met with an infectious disease specialist. To Tammy, it felt like the breakthrough they had been waiting for. Instead, it became another dead end. After the recommended course of antibiotics, Jessica wasn't getting better. She was getting worse. One infectious disease physician dismissed the possibility that Lyme disease could still be driving her symptoms. “Lyme disease is a bacterium, the antibiotic should have killed this,” Tammy recalled the doctor saying. “This must be something else.”

"I knew what I was seeing," explained Tammy. "I just couldn't find anyone who could explain it."

Shortly after, Tammy was at a conference and introduced to Dr. Richard Horowitz, founder of the “LYME-MSIDS (Multiple Systemic Infectious Disease Syndrome) model. Jessica began flying to New York to obtain treatment from Dr. Horowitz, and paired with her functional health doctor at home who was prescribing her natural remedies, Jessica finally started recovering. Tammy shared, “I remember Jessica sitting at our kitchen table one morning eating a bowl of cereal. She picked up a spoon and looked at me and said, ‘Mom, I can hold the spoon and my hand doesn’t hurt!’”

The Question That Changed Everything

The experience left Tammy with one question she couldn't shake. Why had it been so hard to get answers? She had advantages many families didn’t - scientific background, experience reviewing immunology research grants, and an understanding of how medical research becomes clinical care. She had the resources to travel, consult specialists, and pursue treatments that weren't covered by insurance.

And even with every advantage, finding answers had been exhausting, confusing, and financially draining. She couldn't stop thinking about families who didn't have those same opportunities. "If this was this hard for us," she thought, "what happens to everyone else?"

That question would ultimately become the foundation of LymeSeek.

From One Family's Journey to a Shared Mission

Tammy didn't set out to build a diagnostics company. She set out to solve a problem.

She began reaching out to researchers across the country, assembling experts who shared one belief: patients deserved better diagnostic tools. What started as conversations became collaborations. Collaborations became years of research. Researchers challenged assumptions, tested new ideas, discarded approaches that didn't work, and continued searching for one that would.

What looked like an impossible problem slowly became a mission shared by scientists, physicians, and innovators determined to improve the way Lyme disease is detected.

Why LymeSeek Exists

Today, LymeSeek represents years of scientific collaboration and innovation. But its purpose has never changed. It exists because one family experienced firsthand what diagnostic uncertainty feels like. Because patients deserve answers earlier. Because physicians deserve better tools to help the people sitting across from them. And because no family should have to spend months wondering whether anyone will finally connect the dots.

Perhaps that’s why at LymeSeek, every decision still begins with the same question that inspired the company from the very beginning: “What's best for the patient?”