Doctors dismissed my health concerns and said I was training too hard. No one knew I was competing in the Olympics without being able to see the hurdles.
It took Gail Devers years to get diagnosed, first with Graves' diseases and then with thyroid eye disease. She won three gold medals at the Olympics.
Courtesy of Gail Devers
- Gail Devers is a five-time Olympian and three-time gold medalist in track.
- She dropped to 79 pounds due to Graves' disease between the 1988 and 1992 Olympics.
- She won gold in '92 but was losing her eyesight because of a related condition.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Gail Devers. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I started running when I was 15. By the time I was in college, I was smashing records in the 100-meter hurdles and sprint, so no one was surprised when I made the 1988 Olympic team. I was 129 pounds of muscle and power, and I could dash through the hurdles in just 12.61 seconds, a time that would have been good enough to win a medal in the Games.
But as the Olympics grew closer, I knew something wasn't right with my body. You don't need to be an athlete to have that power — you know your body better than any doctor you see once or twice a year.
My hair was falling out, and I pulled a hamstring just from jogging. That should not have been happening. I started losing weight, and at the Olympics, I ran the slowest 100-meters I'd done in a competition. I wanted to succeed so badly, but my body just wasn't there.
Doctors told me I was training too hard
When I got home, I started seeing doctor after doctor. I would open the phone book and call a new doctor, hoping for an answer.
All the while, people were talking about me. I had dropped to 79 pounds, and I looked incredibly sick. People asked me if I was anorexic or on drugs. Those comments hurt and left imprints that I carry with me to this day.
Despite how obviously sick I was, doctors couldn't find an answer. Instead, they said it was my fault: I was training too hard, or I was stressed. But I knew that wasn't right, and I kept fighting to get an answer.
I felt better, but my vision started to fail
After two and a half years of arguing with doctors, I was diagnosed with Graves' disease, a condition that causes an overactive thyroid. I was so excited to have my life back on track — literally. I had qualified for two events in the 1992 Olympics.
While I was feeling much better, I was living with a secret: my eyesight was terrible. It was like I was constantly looking through clouds. My eyes were always red, puffy, and bulging, so people asked if I had pink eye or allergies. I started wearing sunglasses everywhere. I always had a pair on my face and a spare pair on my head.
Image of Sport
Runners are taught to do the hurdles in rhythm: eight steps off the blocks, then jump; three strides between the hurdles; then five strides to the finish line. That became my mantra. I could run the hurdles faster than anyone else, even without seeing them clearly.
It took decades to get a diagnosis
At the 1992 games, I tripped on the final hurdle, a fall that became famous, but I took a gold medal in the 100-meter sprint. In the next Olympics, in 1996, I won gold again in the 100-meter sprint and a third gold medal in the 100-meter relay. I also competed in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics.
I lived a charmed life and had an impressive career, but my eyesight was still failing me. I stopped driving at night. I remember once driving with my kids, being worried about their safety because my eyes were so bad that day. For a long time, I didn't even tell my husband how bad it was.
No doctors could give me answers, so I assumed that my eye problems were related to my Graves' disease. Then, only two years ago, I was diagnosed with thyroid eye disease. Having a diagnosis meant I had answers and could get treatment that worked, in my case, from a neuro-ophthalmologist.
I call my eye disease Ted, pronounced like the name. When you've been living with someone as long as I've been living with Ted, you have to give them a name. For a long time, I knew Ted was around, but I didn't know what to call him.
I want others to know about thyroid eye disease. In my case, getting a diagnosis was a marathon when it should have been a sprint. Now, I'm running a relay, passing information that others can use to get their life back on track.