My Public Battle With Graves’ Disease Nearly Destroyed Me

But even the right diagnosis and treatment could not erase the trauma I endured searching for them. On August 1, 2025, months after beginning treatment, I was hospitalized following a severe mental-health crisis. Ironically, I was not hospitalized at the height of my illness, but in the aftermath. The initial relief I felt once treatment began working slowly gave way to something else entirely: the realization of how absent from myself I had been for the previous two years. I had been hormonally dysregulated, cognitively impaired, and psychologically untethered for so long that recovery didn’t bring me peace. It brought me clarity. And for me, clarity arrived carrying grief. Grief for the time I could not get back. For what this illness had taken from me professionally, creatively, relationally, psychologically. I spent at least two years of my life physically present but mentally unreachable. My grief hit me so hard that there was a moment I was unsure I could carry it. Autoimmune disease does not exclusively exist in our bodies. When your hormones, nervous system, cognition, sleep, and sense of identity have been disrupted for long enough, the psychological consequences are not secondary. They are part of the illness, too.