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.
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.