In the pilot episode of "I Am Shauna Rae," Shauna Rae gives viewers some context about her medical condition and a brief history of how she has been coping with its consequences up to that moment. Her health struggles began in her infancy when, at the age of six months, Rae's parents discovered a tumor growing on the back of her head. Being concerned about the potential dangers the growth might entail, they shared their worries with medical professionals, and Rae was subsequently diagnosed with brain cancer. She went through over two years of chemotherapy until she was deemed cancer-free.
A couple of years later, her family noticed that Rae was significantly smaller than her peers, which brought their worries for her health to the forefront once again. At that point, doctors diagnosed her with a severely underactive pituitary gland, which meant that her rate of growth hormone production was incredibly slow. Rae was prescribed supplementary growth hormones, but at the age of 16, she was informed by her doctors that she would not grow anymore. Her official diagnosis is pituitary dwarfism.
Rae told People that when she learned she would stop growing as a teenager, her mental health was also greatly impacted. "It probably was the lowest time of my life, because I always imagined that I would be tall. And getting that news, it just kind of was like a hammer crashing into glass," Rae admitted.
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