Doctors dismissed my health concerns and said I was training too hard. No one knew I was competing in the Olympics without being able to see the hurdles.

Runners are taught to do the hurdles in rhythm: eight steps off the blocks, then jump; three strides between the hurdles; then five strides to the finish line. That became my mantra. I could run the hurdles faster than anyone else, even without seeing them clearly.

It took decades to get a diagnosis

At the 1992 games, I tripped on the final hurdle, a fall that became famous, but I took a gold medal in the 100-meter sprint. In the next Olympics, in 1996, I won gold again in the 100-meter sprint and a third gold medal in the 100-meter relay. I also competed in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics.

I lived a charmed life and had an impressive career, but my eyesight was still failing me. I stopped driving at night. I remember once driving with my kids, being worried about their safety because my eyes were so bad that day. For a long time, I didn’t even tell my husband how bad it was.

No doctors could give me answers, so I assumed that my eye problems were related to my Graves’ disease. Then, only two years ago, I was diagnosed with thyroid eye disease. Having a diagnosis meant I had answers and could get treatment that worked, in my case, from a neuro-ophthalmologist.

I call my eye disease Ted, pronounced like the name. When you’ve been living with someone as long as I’ve been living with Ted, you have to give them a name. For a long time, I knew Ted was around, but I didn’t know what to call him.

I want others to know about thyroid eye disease. In my case, getting a diagnosis was a marathon when it should have been a sprint. Now, I’m running a relay, passing information that others can use to get their life back on track.