Suni Lee Finds Her Balance

A couple of month after Lee woke up with a body that didn’t feel like her own, her doctors shut her down from training and competing, and on April 3, Lee announced she was ending her sophomore season early on account of a “non-gymnastics health-related issue involving my kidneys.”

The kidneys, the 2 bean-shaped organs positioned below your rib cage on each side of your spine, are each made up of roughly one million nephrons—microscopic tubes with mini filters which are critical for keeping the body’s fluid and mineral content balanced and blood pressure controlled. Blood flows right into a cluster of tiny blood vessels called the glomerulus, which removes waste and excess water from the blood. Those filtered substances then turn out to be urine.

With a condition like Lee’s, the kidney tissue can eventually show signs of injury and scarring. “When scarring [on the kidneys] occurs, it tends to turn out to be a little bit of a vicious cycle,” Debbie Gipson, MD, this system director within the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases on the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, tells SELF. “The body is reacting to that injury and injury begets injury.” Because the kidneys’ filters turn out to be inflamed or damaged, it becomes harder for the organs to clear waste and excess fluid from the body, Dr. Gipson, who isn’t treating Lee, explains. When that happens, blood and protein can leak into urine, and symptoms like swelling and fatigue can manifest.

Lee has shared the name of her current diagnosis with SELF off the record, but her medical team believes it might change as they proceed to know what’s happening inside her body, so she is keeping it private for now. While multiple in seven people may develop chronic kidney disease of their lifetime, Lee’s condition isn’t common, and there isn’t any cure yet. Treatment typically involves a drugs regimen to assist manage symptoms, but Lee’s care plan is a piece in progress.

As an elite athlete, Lee’s body is her instrument. There’s an intimacy and awareness borne from years spent testing her limits and becoming extremely acquainted with every nook and cranny, every strength and weakness. Now, overnight, her body felt completely foreign. She was alleged to be preparing for the postseason. She was alleged to be celebrating her final collegiate season. She was about to show 20. As a substitute, she wondered, What’s fallacious with me?

While Lee says it feels good to have a greater idea of what’s happening together with her health, to know that there could possibly be a path to improving, a diagnosis also solidifies that something is fallacious. It was a heartbreaking and confusing realization that left Lee in denial: “How do I just randomly get up someday swollen, and now I’m stuck with this condition for the remainder of my life?”

For an athlete, it will probably feel such as you’re only pretty much as good as your last result, and Lee has talked about her struggles with imposter syndrome. Last yr she told ESPN that it’s been hard to live as much as the gold-medal standard, saying, “There’s just been a lot doubt in like, ‘Oh, she shouldn’t have won [the] Olympics, blah, blah, blah,’ and it really hits my soul.” It’s a part of why competing in Paris next summer means a lot to her: It’s a likelihood to prove that her success wasn’t a fluke. Lee desires to win gold in her signature event, the uneven bars, and within the team event. Repeating as all-around champion? “That might be amazing,” she says.