Aly Raisman has been hospitalized twice for paralysis, stroke-like symptoms, she says

"I was tested for a stroke because I literally couldn't move my body. It was so scary."

Aly Raisman opened up about her private health issues in a recent podcast interview.

The Olympian was a guest on a recent episode of the interview-style podcast “Call Her Daddy,” where she divulged she’d been hospitalized twice for “stroke like symptoms” in recent years.

“I can’t remember my name. I’m slurring my words. I can barely speak. Both times I was tested for a stroke because I literally couldn’t move my body. It was so scary,” she said on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast episode, which aired July 17.

Raisman is a 30-year-old retired gymnast from Needham, who competed twice in the Olympics, with a career marked by six Olympic medals and five World Championship medals.

Her first episode of this manner happened in 2020, when her mom couldn’t come with her in an ambulance to the hospital. And this experience was made all the more harrowing by her history with medical trauma.

“They’re asking me what my name is, but I can’t remember my name or say what my name is. And I was aware enough to know like, ‘Oh my God, I have two men … I can’t move my arms and my legs. I can’t move my body. I can’t speak. Like, what if they take advantage of me?'” the Olympian said.

Raisman was one of the Olympians who was sexually abused by USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar. Although Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for the sexual abuse, the effects of his awful deeds still remain.

“I was, like, still really struggling a lot with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). People don’t realize how much it still lives with you when you’ve been through something traumatic,” she said.

Similar symptoms caused the 30-year-old to be hospitalized in 2023.

“They wouldn’t release me because I couldn’t sit up on my own,” she said. “I needed help walking, going to the bathroom. It was just the most to be able to go from being like an athlete and being able to push myself so much to being able to literally not even be able to move my fingers, move my legs. I had complete body paralysis.”

Raisman will be returning to the Olympics this year not to compete but as an official hospitality ambassador, where she’s concerned about running into emotional triggers.

“I might see someone that maybe didn’t protect me in the past,” she said.