Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman is detailing her scary hospitalizations.
Aly Raisman is opening up about her health struggles. On the latest episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, the 30-year-old Olympic gymnast detailed the two times she was hospitalized after having stroke-like symptoms.
"I can't remember my name. I'm slurring my words. I can barely speak," she said. "Both times I was tested for a stroke because I literally couldn't move my body. It was so scary."
Raisman first experienced the scary medical issue amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which meant that she had to ride in the ambulance to the hospital alone.
"They're asking me what my name is, but I can't remember my name or say what my name is," she recalled. "I was aware enough to know like, 'Oh my God, I have two men [here and] I can't move my arms and my legs. I can't move my body. I can't speak. Like, what if they take advantage of me?'"
The experience was triggering for Raisman as she's one of the athletes who suffered sexual abuse at the hand of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Nassar pleaded guilty to several charges in 2017 and was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison the following year.
"I was like really still struggling a lot with PTSD," Raisman said while recalling her ambulance ride. "People don't realize how much it still lives with you when you've been through something traumatic."
Raisman experienced similar symptoms last year.
"They wouldn't release me because I couldn't sit up on my own. I needed help walking, going to the bathroom. It took me so long," she said. "It was just the most [challenging] to be able to go from being like an athlete and being able to push myself so much to being able to literally not even be able to move my fingers, move my legs. I had complete body paralysis."
Raisman said that stress exacerbates her symptoms, so she has "to be very on top" of therapy and trusts her therapist to work with her if she's "starting to feel off."
Now, Raisman is gearing up to head to Paris for the 2024 Olympic Games. While Raisman has retired from gymnastics, she's set to be involved in this year's Games by serving as an official hospitality ambassador.
"I'm gonna be so busy," she said. "There's gonna be a lot of triggers. I might see someone that maybe didn't protect me in the past. So, it's working on that. It's very complicated."
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