The tennis player Martina Navratilova announces that she has overcome cancer: “As far as they have told me, I am clean”

The winner of 59 Grand Slam titles, Martina Navratilova, has also beaten cancer. “As far as the doctors know, I’m clean,” the 66-year-old tennis legend told British journalist Piers Morgan for talkTV in an excerpt from an interview advanced yesterday and that will be broadcast this Tuesday, March 21 in the United Kingdom. The news comes just four months after the tennis player announced in a statement last January that she had been diagnosed with stage one throat and breast cancer. “I was in a total panic for three days, thinking that I might not see next Christmas. A wish list of all the things I wanted to do came to my mind. And this may sound very superficial, but I was like… ‘Okay, what car do I really want to drive if I live like a year?’, she comments in the interview.

The former Czech-American athlete began to suspect that she had the disease in November last year, during the WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) finals, when she noticed a swelling on her neck that did not go down. Her representative, Mary Greenham, was the one who said Navratilova had noticed an enlarged lymph node in her neck during the event in Texas and, when she saw that she was not backing down, she underwent a biopsy. “At the same time that Martina was undergoing throat tests, a suspicious form was found in her breast that was later diagnosed as cancer, unrelated to throat cancer,” Greenham said when the disease was made public. from Navratilova.

During the four months that Navratilova’s nightmare has lasted, considered one of the best players of all time after remaining number one in the world for 332 weeks, she has undergone a rigorous treatment plan that has included daily radiation for three weeks, combined with three weekly episodes of chemotherapy. “That was the hard part because the first week was chemo and radiation at the same time. When you start to feel bad, you’re not sure if it’s from the chemo or the proton. I didn’t really feel the proton until week three, but then you have a sore mouth and your throat starts to close up. Everything is swollen and very uncomfortable and the proton makes your saliva strange, ”she recalls in her talk with Piers Morgan. She will still undergo radiation in her breast, she confirms to him, “but only for a couple of weeks and it’s more preventative than anything else,” she clarified.

Navratilova, who did not retire from tennis until she was 50 after 32 years of professional activity, was already diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer 13 years ago, but was declared free of it in 2010, after a lumpectomy and six months of radiation. “She smacked my butt, for real. I feel so in control of my life and my body and then this comes along, which is completely out of my hands, ”she told the magazine at the time. People.

In the new interview, the athlete also confesses that the disease has stopped the plans he had to adopt a baby with his wife, the ex-model Julia Lemigova, 50 years old. “I think it was a good idea for a while, but this has made it clear that I’m not the youngest anymore and I don’t want to be the grandmother on the playground,” she admits to a visibly emotional Morgan: “Forget about that part, I think. that there is not enough space for this to happen.”

Lemigova, who is the mother of two daughters ages 23 and 16, and Navratilova have been a couple since 2006. They got engaged at the US Open in September 2014 and married in New York City that December. Since then, she has been by her side at all times. Thank you to everyone who has reached out to share words of support. Together, we will fight this,” wrote Lemigova, one of the protagonists of the series.reality The Real Housewives of Miami, through his instagram after his partner went public with his health problems at the beginning of the year. Now they will also enjoy her recovery together.