In eighth grade, Bella began having a mix of physical and psychiatric symptoms, including brain fog, anxiety, exhaustion, poor focus, headaches, bone pain, and crying spells—some of which may have emanated from Lyme disease, from which her mother and brother also suffer. She has also been diagnosed with babesiosis, a tick-borne parasitic infection of red blood cells that sometimes co-occurs with Lyme. In her teenage years, as her mother was exploring holistic medicine for her own disease, Bella started receiving ultraviolet-light irradiation of her blood and ozone therapy—two unproven alternative treatments for inflammatory conditions such as Lyme—as well as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, another adjunctive treatment for Lyme. At 20, she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and started on hormone replacement. She also says she experiences adrenal fatigue, a term that refers to a cluster of nonspecific symptoms that some contend represents a deficit in cortisol production caused by chronic stress.