A 24-year-old Maidstone woman is back in hospital just weeks after being forced to return from America midway through a course of treatment.

Kirsty Keep was rushed to Tunbridge Wells Hospital, Pembury, on Friday suffering the same chronic pain, vomiting and fitting she experienced for months before flying to the Sponaugle Wellness Institute, Florida, in June.

Miss Keep was responding well to treatment but had to return in mid-September when her three-month visa expired.

She has been ill since being bitten by an insect, aged 12, and was treated for autoimmune disease lupus, including with powerful chemotherapy drugs, for seven years before discovering she didn’t have it.

Visits to America and ArminLabs in Bavaria, Germany, confirmed her family’s suspicion she had lyme disease and a condition which makes removing toxins from the body difficult. Mum Theresa said: “Over the last two weeks she’d really picked up.

“I thought, oh my God, perhaps it’s working, then bang. One girl at Sponaugle could hardly speak and was in a wheelchair. After treatment she walked a mile.”

Miss Keep’s heart is now being monitored by doctors after Dr Rick Sponaugle found she suffered with Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome, which makes the heart beat faster.

She registered 167 beats per minute while she slept – a normal resting heart rate is between 60 and 100.

She also has an appointment to see an infectious disease specialist in London as the American doctor said parasites resulting from the untreated lyme disease have been invading her joints and brain, causing the agonising symptoms.

However, suitable diagnosis and treatment is not available in the UK so the family has started raising another £40,000 to get Miss Keep back to Sponaugle. Diagnosis, treatment and accommodation abroad has so far cost £70,000.

Miss Keep, who lives with her mum in Camp Way, Mangravet, said: “I have hope now that I can get better but it’s annoying I still can’t live.

“Dr Sponaugle said he could clear my brain infection and get me off all the drugs and back to normal. That’s my dream.”