My Public Struggle With Graves’ Disease Nearly Destroyed Me

(SeaPRwire) –   Post-birth-control syndrome. Bipolar disorder. Anxiety disorder. Clinical depression. Chronic fatigue. An intestinal parasite. Burnout. IBS.

These were among the possible conditions my doctors suggested before identifying the true one. In my heart, I felt none were accurate. Yet as my condition worsened, my confidence in my own judgment wavered. I required clear thinking to champion my own care, all while suffering from a sickness that clouded that very ability. I learned the painful lesson that a woman lost in the medical system is seldom believed.

Women are frequently conditioned to question the seriousness of our own suffering. I was no different.

Just as my faith in my own body was crumbling, I was on screen embodying a character celebrated for her toughness and stamina. On *The Boys*, a popular series that employs superhero tropes to critique fame, politics, and authority, I portray Annie January, or Starlight. She stands as one of the few genuinely heroic figures on the program. The role of Annie has held profound significance for me. However, during the filming of our cherished last season in 2025, I lost touch with her. I lost myself.

The effects of my undiagnosed condition drove a wedge between me and the character I had dedicated years to developing. My memory began to falter. My own body seemed foreign. My emotional availability, a trait I’ve always guarded and prized as a performer, grew harder and harder to summon.

It started quietly around September 2023, when I was 29: an exhaustion that seemed unwarranted by my schedule. Roughly two years later, that fatigue became debilitating. I started sleeping through alarms. On days off, I would sleep for 19 hours or longer without waking. Past mood swings returned with greater force. Weakness and numbness in my hands and feet made walking feel unsafe. I developed heart palpitations and constant urinary discomfort. Yet the most alarming sign was the mental deterioration. My short-term memory declined to such a degree that memorizing basic dialogue turned into a struggle—a horrifying prospect when you are on set.

Autoimmune disorders seldom present identically from one person to the next. The specific cluster of symptoms I endured isn’t found on tidy online checklists, which only amplified my profound disorientation and dread.

In time, my physicians sent me to a neurologist. By then, I was bracing myself for the chance I might be dying. The agony was so immense that the thought of death seemed like a possible respite. The prospect felt less frightening than the idea of existing in that condition forever.

These health struggles descended as I was shooting the last season of *The Boys* and under more public scrutiny than ever before. I was enduring the physical torment of a chronic illness in full view. Managing it privately is emotionally taxing enough, but to have my physical state become a subject of public speculation, minimization, and dismissal was crushing.

My symptoms continued for years without explanation. Then, in May 2025, as I was at work completing the final season, my endocrinologist emailed me a single line: “WE HAVE AN ANSWER!! I CAN HELP YOU!!” This message followed weeks of tests and specialist visits, ending with an antibody test that provided the definitive answer: Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disorder triggered by an overactive thyroid. That day marked a rebirth for me. Not because everything was instantly cured, but because it finally imposed order on the chaos. It gave a name to the suffering of years. It provided an answer.

Yet even the correct diagnosis and subsequent care could not undo the trauma of the search. On August 1, 2025, months into treatment, I was admitted to a hospital after a serious mental health breakdown. Ironically, my hospitalization did not occur at the peak of my sickness, but in its wake. The early relief I felt as treatment took effect gradually transformed into a different realization: an awareness of how detached from my own self I had been for the prior two years. I had been hormonally imbalanced, mentally compromised, and psychologically adrift for so long that getting better did not bring tranquility. It brought stark awareness. And for me, that awareness came laden with sorrow. Sorrow for the lost time. For what the disease had stolen from me in my career, my creativity, my relationships, my psyche. I lived at least two years physically there but mentally inaccessible. The weight of my grief was so intense that I briefly doubted my ability to bear it. Autoimmune illness is not confined to the physical body. When your hormones, nervous system, mental sharpness, sleep, and self-perception are disrupted for a prolonged period, the psychological fallout is not a side effect. It is integral to the disease.

Treatment has restored much of my physical and emotional self, but the path to recovery has been far from straightforward. It has been an ongoing lesson in heeding my body’s signals rather than silencing them. I once defined strength as the capacity to endure. My sense of self was tied to powering through weariness and pain, staying productive at all costs. But endurance is not synonymous with wellness. Self-sacrifice does not equal resilience. I used to believe strength meant emerging from difficulty unscathed. Now, a year into treatment, I believe it means permitting hardship to transform you.

What has compelled me to discuss my experience with Graves’ disease so candidly is the knowledge that none of this should have felt so alienating or surprising. Yet illnesses that primarily impact women continue to be downplayed, misjudged, or sensationalized. Silence carries a cost. So does a lack of understanding. Therefore, staying quiet is no longer a choice I can make.

I hope that openly sharing the details of my symptoms might help someone recognize their own illness sooner than I did. The body whispers long before it shouts. Tune in to those whispers before your body is compelled to scream so loudly that everyone else can hear it, too.