After Suni Lee won gold in the women’s gymnastics individual all-around final at the Tokyo Olympics, the Paris Games felt like a natural next step—a shoo-in, even—until a sudden bout of painful and distressing symptoms turned her world upside-down (and not in the adrenaline-fueled, mat-flip kind of way).
Last year, the now 21-year-old gymnast was diagnosed with two rare kidney diseases. Since then, Lee has shared snippets of her health journey, and on June 30, she qualified for Paris—something that, at her lowest point, she feared was impossible. Below, we dive into everything Lee has shared about her kidney disease, from the jarring warning signs to how she’s feeling today.
Lee’s first symptoms appeared seemingly overnight.
In February 2023, Lee woke up with swollen ankles and quickly blamed her intense training routine, she previously told SELF in a cover story. She didn’t think much of it until the following morning, when her face, hands, and legs—essentially her whole body—followed suit. “I just kept getting more swollen…and I think I gained, like, 40 pounds,” she recalled. The swelling immediately affected her training. “I kept peeling off the bar. I couldn’t hold on,” she said. “My fingers were so swollen.”
At first, doctors thought Lee was experiencing an allergic reaction, but as her symptoms progressed over two weeks, Lee knew that was unlikely. In March 2023, she had to sit out of an NCAA meet—at this point, she was competing as a student with Auburn University’s gymnastics team—and all the while, she and her medical providers were at a loss for what was wrong. “It affected my whole body and how I looked and how I was feeling,” she said.
In addition to extreme swelling (she had sometimes even woken up with her eyes swollen shut), Lee also experienced hot flashes, cold spells, headaches, and cramping. At the April Team USA Media Summit, she shared that she lived with constant pain, nausea, and lightheadedness. “I could not bend my legs the slightest. I couldn’t squeeze my fingers,” she said.
This all took a mental toll, too. That time of her life was “very, very miserable,” Lee candidly shared at the Summit. “I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror,” she told Sports Illustrated in June. “I was just rotting in my bed. I couldn’t talk to anybody. I didn’t leave the house.”
She was ultimately diagnosed with two rare kidney conditions.
Lee had undergone multiple medical tests to no avail when USA Gymnastics team physician Marcia Faustin asked if her doctors had completed a routine urine test. Lee hadn’t, and admitted that she had been having difficulty peeing for two weeks—a red flag that pointed to kidney trouble. Her doctors ran more labs, and she was finally referred to a specialist who recommended a biopsy of her kidney tissue, which would determine if it had signs of damage or disease.
When SELF spoke with Lee last year, she shared her diagnoses off the record, understandably hesitant to state specifics because her doctors believed her conditions might evolve. Since then, she has publicly shared that she was diagnosed with two separate conditions related to her kidneys, but has not disclosed their names. Lee did tell SELF that her conditions are rare and that there is no cure yet, though she is on a regular medication regimen to manage her symptoms.
Lee retired from college gymnastics to focus on her health.
On April 3, 2023, Lee announced that she wouldn’t finish her sophomore gymnastics season at Auburn. “I have been dealing with a non-gymnastics health-related issue involving my kidneys,” she shared on social media. “For my safety, the medical team did not clear me to train and compete over the last few weeks. I am blessed and thankful to be working with the best specialized medical team to treat and manage my diagnosis. My focus at this time is my health and recovery.”
