A carefree summer break on the Greek island of Syros in 2019 turned into a nightmare for Victoria Stellas, a 51-year-old woman of Greek heritage from Wales, who found herself fighting for her life after a tick bite left her with tick-borne encephalitis, a rare but potentially fatal viral infection of the brain.

Victoria, who was born in Greece and moved to Wales with her family at the age of five, returns to the country every year for holidays. That summer, however, she could not have imagined that a bite she barely noticed would change her life for good.

The first symptoms

While on Syros, Victoria began to feel intense fatigue and flu-like symptoms. She thought little of it at the time, assuming she had picked up an ordinary virus. She believes she was bitten while visiting her brother-in-law’s home on the island, where he keeps goats, animals that commonly attract ticks.

A few days after returning to the UK, her condition deteriorated sharply. She began suffering seizures during the night, and doctors were initially unable to explain what was happening to her. “I kept having seizures and nobody knew what was wrong with me. It was an unusual infection and there weren’t the right specialists around to diagnose it,” she recalls.

Forty two days in an induced coma

After an MRI scan, doctors decided she needed to be airlifted by helicopter to the Walton Centre, a specialist neurology hospital in Liverpool.

There, she was placed in an induced coma, where she remained for 42 days, in order to control the severe complications caused by inflammation of the brain.

She was eventually diagnosed with tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), a viral disease transmitted through the bite of an infected tick. Her hospital treatment and subsequent rehabilitation lasted around six months in total.

Ongoing effects

Although she survived, the illness left her with serious neurological damage. Victoria now struggles with memory problems, continues to experience seizures at night, and takes between 15 and 18 tablets a day. The seizures have become less frequent than in the first years after her illness, but they have not stopped. “My life has changed completely. Apart from work, I don’t go out the way I used to. I was so much more sociable before,” she says.

The illness affected not only her health but also her working life. Victoria was forced to give up both her job in a pub and her role as a teaching assistant at a school for children with special educational needs.

Before the infection, she says, she was outgoing and highly sociable. “Name me one job that doesn’t need memory. Everything you do in life requires you to remember things, shopping, travelling, working,” she explains.

When she tried to return to the school where she had worked, she found she could no longer remember the names of either the pupils or her colleagues. “I recognised the faces, but not the names. And that is still the case today,” she says.

What is tick-borne encephalitis

Tick-borne encephalitis is a viral infection spread through tick bites. The ticks that carry it are found across large parts of Europe and Russia, as well as in parts of China and Japan. In its early stages, like in Victoroa’s case, it produces flu-like symptoms, including fever, fatigue, headaches and muscle pain.

In a small proportion of patients, however, the virus attacks the central nervous system, causing encephalitis, with symptoms that can include seizures, confusion, difficulty speaking, and paralysis or weakness in parts of the body.

Vaccination and prevention

The NHS recommends that travellers heading to areas where the disease is common, and who plan to spend time in wooded areas or near livestock, get vaccinated at least a month before their trip.

Victoria admits she had no idea the vaccine even existed before she fell ill. She now spends time raising public awareness of the disease and speaks each year to students at Bangor University, in the hope that sharing her story will help others protect themselves.

Experts urge caution, not alarm

Professor Benedict Michael of the University of Liverpool, a specialist in zoonotic diseases, points out that cases like Victoria’s are, fortunately, extremely rare.

According to him, around 97 percent of people infected do not develop serious complications, experiencing either no symptoms at all or only a brief flu-like illness. Only around 3 percent go on to develop encephalitis.

He stresses, however, that the disease is particularly serious because there is no specific antiviral treatment for it. Once encephalitis develops, treatment is limited to supportive care, controlling seizures and preventing further complications. For this reason, experts place particular emphasis on prevention and on vaccinating travellers who plan to visit high-risk areas.