'I Knew Something Was Wrong': Wanda Durant On Her Graves' Disease Diagnosis, TED And Being Son Kevin's Biggest Fan
Usually, when you see Wanda Durant, she’s all about the game of basketball. She can often be seen sitting court side at NBA games, rooting emphatically for her son, Kevin Durant. She roots for him off the court too, uplifting him in all he does as an athlete who deals with a lot of unwanted commentary and criticism.
“I’m Kevin’s biggest fan,” she tells ESSENCE. “He’s always going to be Kevin and that’s it. I understand the arena in which he’s in and being a professional athlete, you are going to have some who love him, but some don’t. I’m still his mom so it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what other people say. I enjoy him.”
Ms. Wanda is also hoping to uplift others when it comes to a topic very important to her: Graves’ disease and thyroid eye disease. The mother, grandmother, entrepreneur and philanthropist is someone thriving with Graves. She was diagnosed 17 years ago after suffering for years with alarming ailments.
“About three years prior to being diagnosed with Graves’ disease, I was experiencing the symptoms — rapid heart rate, a loss of weight, hair thinning, skin irritations, my eye slightly bulged with a little pain in my right eye. I knew something was wrong,” she says. She went to her doctor to seek some answers, yet test results came back normal even though she felt anything but “normal.” Wanda’s thyroid levels simply weren’t extreme enough on the scale for it to be an obvious Graves’ situation.
Things eventually came to a head after she went to the emergency room during an “explosive” episode where her heart rate was alarmingly rapid.
“I was alone and I had never experienced it to that severity before,” she recalls. I was taken to the ER and there I had to be treated to have my heart rate regulated. They had to stop my heart twice with medication. And then I left the emergency room and I still wasn’t diagnosed with anything. But later that evening, the ER physician suggested that I talk to my doctor and go see an endocrinologist. When I did, that’s when I was diagnosed.”
Graves’ disease wasn’t new to Wanda. She had family members who suffered from the condition, though she admits it wasn’t something they openly talked about. What she wasn’t aware of though is something often associated with Graves, and that’s thyroid eye disease, or TED. The autoimmune disorder is when the immune system attacks muscle and fat tissue behind the eyes causing inflammation and scar tissue. Symptoms include eye bulging, eyes that don’t work together and double vision.
“With my right eye, I have dealt with the eye pain, and previously I just thought, ‘Okay, that’s just a part of having Graves’ disease,’” she says. “But now I have an appointment with a TED eye specialist. I’ll get a better understanding of actually what’s going on with my eye.”
“Thirty percent of patients with Graves’ disease are unaware that there’s a possibility of having TED,” she adds. “Fifty percent of them have TED and are unaware that it exists. We have to bring awareness that TED is a separate and a different issue from Graves’ disease, even though they kind of run in tandem. There are separate treatment methods for them both.”