Gymnast Suni Lee was told kidney disease would end her career. 3 Olympic medals later, she shares the lessons she's learned along the way.

As a member of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, Sunisa “Suni” Lee came home from the 2024 Paris Olympics this summer with three new medals — one gold and two bronze — to add to her collection. That’s a remarkable achievement for any athlete. For someone who had received what she considered at the time to be a career-ending health diagnosis just a year and a half before, it’s nothing short of a miracle.

In February 2023, doctors told Lee that she had two incurable kidney diseases after she experienced mysterious symptoms that limited her ability to train. “I was swollen in my face, my whole body. I gained like 45 pounds. I couldn’t fit into my clothes, and I couldn’t do any gymnastics,” the 21-year-old tells Yahoo Life.

While Lee hasn’t publicly specified which conditions she’s been diagnosed with, she has been candid about how they’ve disrupted her life — including prompting her decision to retire from college gymnastics a few months later in order to focus on her “health and recovery.” Says Lee: “It was really scary, because getting told that you’re never going to be able to do gymnastics again was heartbreaking.”

But as Lee’s performance in Paris shows, she’s not only returned to gymnastics but continued to excel despite her health setback. “I’m doing really good right now,” she says. “I have been on such a great routine and also have just matured so much to the point where I’ve learned to be OK with [her diagnosis].”

She’s also working with the American Kidney Fund on the Know Your Kidneys initiative, empowering people to learn more about their own kidney health. Here, she shares five lessons she’s learned over the course of her health journey.

You are your best advocate

“I really want to put an emphasis on how important it is to advocate for yourself and seek the right diagnosis,” she says. “I’m the only person that can really feel everything that I’m going through and I notice the changes, even when other people don’t.”

When Lee first sought medical advice about the swelling she was experiencing, a doctor chalked it up to an allergic reaction. But swelling is common when kidneys are malfunctioning and unable to properly filter out wastes, toxins and excess water, according to Cleveland Clinic.

LaVarne Burton, president and CEO of the American Kidney Fund, tells Yahoo Life that Lee’s persistence in finding a diagnosis is admirable.

“You really want to advocate for yourself, because we’re the only ones who really know and understand our bodies,” she says. “You want to be calm, but persistent. You want to get to the underlying cause of this. And once you know that underlying cause, you want to work with your health care team, as Suni did, to make changes in your exercise or your diet, or medications, if needed. Whatever that treatment plan is, that’s what you want to do.”

Adjusting her approach to gymnastics training was necessary

Although Lee was cleared for some physical activity by April 2023, her health continued to impact her training. “That’s the part where it gets a little bit frustrating. But I’ve learned to adjust, especially when it comes to my diet, my training habits,” she says. “I always just listen to my body because that’s the most important thing. I get very tired easily. Some days I’m more nauseous than others. It just really depends.”

Gaining weight also made it difficult for her to execute certain routines.

“With gymnastics, it’s all muscle memory. I’ve been doing it for almost 17 years now, so I pretty much have everything remembered,” she says. “My body knows exactly how to do it and I knew I wasn’t gonna forget how to do gymnastics. I just knew that I was gonna have to relearn how to do it when adding extra pounds every single day. There were just so many different changes.”

She previously told Sports Illustrated that she was able to complete full uneven bar routines on some days but only felt up to bouncing on a trampoline on others. Luckily, she had the full support of her coaches.

“My coaches have never done this before, so we were all kind of relearning because they didn’t know how to coach me at times when I would come in and I was feeling off. But they just told me that if I was able to do something, then I can do it. And if I wasn’t, then I shouldn’t do it,” says Lee. “It wasn’t going to be the end of the world. ... They didn’t love me for my gymnastics, they loved me for me. That was the most important thing.”

You need to love the new version of yourself

Lee admits that dealing with the physical changes to her body — including a swollen appearance and fluctuations in weight — hasn’t always been easy.

“You just wake up, look at yourself and notice you’re just a little bit different. And that’s the part where it gets a little bit frustrating,” says Lee. “It was an adjustment because, obviously, [people] could tell the difference when [they] looked at me.” Her teammates at Auburn University, for example, knew just from looking at Lee that something was wrong, even before she opened up about her health concerns.

Being a public figure also set Lee up for more scrutiny, she says.

“Being a gymnast and having to wear a leotard every single day on TV in front of thousands of people where they just try and put you down ... you know how social media can get. It’s really hard, especially knowing I couldn’t control this,” she says. “That was the hardest part about it, because I had to relearn to love myself, basically ... I had to realize that I wasn’t going to be the same Suni.”

You have to look after your mental health

Dealing with the mental repercussions of her health setback “was a lot harder than it was physically,” she says, “because gymnastics was my safe place. So not being able to do that and having to just sit in my bed and just really think about what was going on was the hardest.”

She recalls being “in such a dark place at that time,” and relying on family, friends, doctors and gymnastics coaches to get her through it. Lee also established tools that still help her manage her mental health to this day, including journaling, reciting words of affirmation and visualizing her routines.

“Also I go to therapy a lot,” she says. “I talk about my feelings just because it’s not good for me to hold it in. And also just going through so much stuff, it’s so nice to just be able to actually talk to somebody about it. That was probably the one thing that had the biggest impact on me.”

Sharing your story can help others

Lee still has boundaries when it comes to what she shares about her health. But sharing what she’s comfortable with can help others feel less alone.

“I know when I was first struggling, I didn’t really know how to talk about it. So thinking about how my words can affect others and just the way that my story can help another person has been my biggest motivation,” she says. “Getting involved with the American Kidney Fund has been such an amazing experience. Getting to share more about my journey and also just learning more along the way.”

“I can’t even quantify the impact of this,” says Burton, noting that there are more than 35 million people in the United States who have some stage of kidney disease. “You’re seeing a very young lady who has achieved such great success in one arena now step into another. And I know just in talking with her that she has come out on the really good end of this, a much stronger person. Regardless of where you are in your journey with kidney disease, you’re not alone.”