Normally, once you see Wanda Durant, she’s all concerning the game of basketball. She will 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 variety of unwanted commentary and criticism.

“I’m Kevin’s biggest fan,” she tells ESSENCE. “He’s at all times going to be Kevin and that’s it. I understand the sector through which he’s in and being an expert athlete, you’re 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 can be hoping to uplift others in terms of a subject very necessary 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 used to be experiencing the symptoms — rapid heart rate, a lack of weight, hair thinning, skin irritations, my eye barely bulged with somewhat pain in my right eye. I knew something was improper,” she says. She went to her doctor to hunt some answers, yet test results got here back normal though she felt anything but “normal.” Wanda’s thyroid levels simply weren’t extreme enough on the dimensions for it to be an obvious Graves’ situation.

Things eventually got here to a head after she went to the emergency room during an “explosive” episode where her heart rate was alarmingly rapid.

“I used to be alone and I had never experienced it to that severity before,” she recalls. I used to be taken to the ER and there I needed to be treated to have my heart rate regulated. They’d to stop my heart twice with medication. After which I left the emergency room and I still wasn’t diagnosed with anything. But later that evening, the ER physician suggested that I confer with my doctor and go see an endocrinologist. Once I did, that’s once I was diagnosed.”

Graves’ disease wasn’t latest to Wanda. She had relations who suffered from the condition, though she admits it wasn’t something they freely talked about. What she wasn’t aware of though is something often related to 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 even have handled the attention pain, and previously I just thought, ‘Okay, that’s just an element of getting Graves’ disease,’” she says. “But now I even have an appointment with a TED eye specialist. I’ll get a greater understanding of truly what’s occurring with my eye.”

“Thirty percent of patients with Graves’ disease are unaware that there’s a possibility of getting TED,” she adds. “Fifty percent of them have TED and are unaware that it exists. Now we have to bring awareness that TED is a separate and a special issue from Graves’ disease, though they type of run in tandem. There are separate treatment methods for them each.”

Though she will probably be seeing a specialist for the primary time about her right eye, Wanda has successfully been in a position to manage her other symptoms by prioritizing her condition. As someone who was once balancing two boys, her work and more as a single mother, it wasn’t initially easy to do.

“As I used to be coping with symptoms, I continued to be the mother to my children and have my profession on the time. And I used to be continuing to maneuver on in my life and I just handled the symptoms,” she says. “Now, living with Graves’ disease I’m more in command of what is happening and I take the medication repeatedly and that keeps my thyroid level normal. And in order that helps me to proceed to thrive, to be a supportive mother and grandmother and to deal with my personal and skilled life. That’s because I’ve taken control of my medical issues.”

She encourages other women who often put themselves last on their list of priorities to start out putting themselves first.

“I do know as women, especially with young children, wives with full lives, we are likely to put ourselves on the back burner. But what I’ve learned is that I’ve got to deal with my health,” she says. “It’s very necessary to me and it’s imperative for my longevity that I do know what’s occurring with me and my health and do whatever I would like to do to administer my health properly and appropriately.”

She adds, “You’ve got to make yourself a vital a part of your life and you’ve to be intentional about that. Be intentional about your calendar, making time for you in your calendar and in your emotional, spiritual, financial, and physical wellbeing.”

And if you’ve handled any symptoms that sound like what she faced before she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, Ms. Wanda says do your research – visiting sites just like the American Thyroid Association and FOCUSonTED.com – and take control of your health, too.

“Pay attention to your body,” she says. “Know what your normal levels are, what your baseline is. I desired to be an element of this [Graves’] Awareness Month because we’d like to know, as women and Black women specifically, the parameters of our health issues and the way we will higher manage it in order that we will have full lives.”