Aly Raisman has been hospitalized more than once after experiencing “stroke-like symptoms” as a result of stress and trauma — something she’s “never” shared publicly before.
“It’s happened twice where it’s been this intense — I feel like I have different minor issues as well, depending on what I’m going through at the time — where, like, I have literally stroke-like symptoms,” Raisman, 30, shared during an interview on the Wednesday, July 17, episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “I can’t remember my name. I’m slurring my words. I can barely speak. Both times I was tested for a stroke because, like, I literally couldn’t move my body.”
The “scary” experience was triggering to Raisman because her past sexual abuse occurred at the hands of a doctor.
“The first time it happened was during COVID. And so, they wouldn’t let my mom in the ambulance with me,” she recalled. “I was aware enough to know, like, ‘Oh, my God, I have two men [with me]. I can’t move my arms and my legs, I can’t move my body, I can’t speak. What if they take advantage of me?’”
Raisman was one of the hundreds of women who came forward as a victim of former Team USA doctor Larry Nassar in 2018. (Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison earlier this year for various sexual abuse crimes. He had previously been sentenced to 60 years in prison for receiving and possessing child pornography.)
“I was really still struggling a lot with PTSD. People don’t realize how much it still lives with you when you’ve been through something traumatic. So, that was really hard for me,” Raisman continued, explaining that her health issue occurred a second time “a little bit over a year ago.”
This time, she had “complete body paralysis” and spent three days in the hospital.
“They wouldn’t release me because I couldn’t sit up on my own. It took me so long. I needed help walking, going to the bathroom,” Raisman shared. “It was the most to be able to go from being an athlete and being able to push myself so much to literally not even be able to move my fingers, move my legs.”
Now, she’s focused on managing stress, which “exacerbates” what Raisman referred to as “a real medical thing.”
Her biggest worry at the moment is traveling to Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics.
“I’m gonna be so busy. There’s gonna be a lot of triggers. I might see someone that maybe didn’t protect me in the past,” she admitted. “So, it’s working on that. It’s very complicated.”
