By Jessica Easthope
Twenty-one-year-old Julia Bruzzese hasn’t taken a step in almost 10 years. But Julia would say she’s taken many to make sure no one else suffers the way she has.
“Countless doctors that I went to at the beginning of this,” she tells Currents News. “Because of that misdiagnosis, I’m in a wheelchair today, and this is happening to so many people.”
Before Julia was diagnosed with lyme disease in 2015 her father and main caregiver Enrico saw his healthy, active daughter fade away. Doctors told him Julia was faking it.
“I was tired, I was always falling asleep in class. I wasn’t able to see the board anymore,” she explains. “You know, I’d be getting recurring fevers for no reason. And I’d be going to my pediatrician for these really concerning symptoms. My hair was coming out like falling out in clumps. My hair. And she would be like, ‘It’s growing pains, you know, it’s just puberty.’”
“She’s blue in color. She has a high fever. And the doctor tells me she may be embellishing a bit,” recalls Enrico
The last decade of Julia’s life has been spent in a wheelchair, lobbying before Congress, advocating for funding, research, and for doctors to take symptoms of chronic lyme disease seriously.
“There’s a tremendous lack of awareness and lack of resources. And people need help,” Enrico tells Currents News. “And we’re trying to get more research, more funding for research, and just more awareness in medical schools and just in the public, about the disease and how serious it could be.”
The inaccuracy of testing is why I’m here today,” says Julia. “So if they would have caught it sooner, if my pediatrician had said, ‘That’s a bull’s eye rash, let me treat you for Lyme disease,’ I wouldn’t be here right now. Probably, I wouldn’t be in a wheelchair. It’s become my mission to raise awareness about lyme disease and advocate for people, because there are millions of people right now suffering with chronic lyme disease.”
Julia feels her platform was given to her early on in her disease by Pope Francis. She met him – fresh off the papal plane on the tarmac at John F. Kennedy airport in New York City the summer of her diagnosis. She thought if anyone could help her walk again it was him.
“I felt so much hope that day. I didn’t get up and walk, but he brought me so many different miracles and so much love,” she says. “And so that’s what I want to give back. And I think the pope brought me that.”
“It all started with the pope. He touched Julia. That’s what he did. He touched her, and he opened up Julia’s life to all these blessings that continue to this day,” adds. Enrico. “It’s just amazing.”
Now a junior at Long Island University, Julia is on track to becoming a doctor.
She still hopes to walk again – she has yet to get the miracle she asked Pope Francis for.
“So many people are suffering in silence and I’m grateful to be able to be their voice in a way,” she tells Currents News.”
“May this only happen to us,” says Enrico. “And that’s what I always ask God when I pray to him. Nobody else.”
But she says today, with confidence, she’s gotten more.