Martina Navratilova, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, was in “total panic” for several days when she feared she would die of cancer.
Navratilova opened up about her throat and breast cancer diagnosis in a forthcoming interview with “Piers Morgan Uncensored” on TalkTV.
She told the Post columnist that she found out in December that she had “squamous cell carcinoma” in her throat and her doctor believed it was coming from somewhere else in the body.
“I had a sense of foreboding when I asked the doctor, ‘What do you think the chances are?’ and he says about 50-50. I was like, I don’t like those odds,” she said.
“The lymph nodes don’t get swollen for no reason, and so I didn’t have a good feeling about it at that point. And then when the doctor called me and told me it could be coming from the liver or the kidney or the lungs, and I’m thinking it could be the brain, it could be the pancreas, liver’s not a good thing either.
“So, I was in a total panic for three days thinking I may not see next Christmas. This was the first week in December, I will see this Christmas but maybe not the next one.”
Further testing revealed that Navratilova also had cancer in her right breast; she battled cancer in her left breast 13 years ago.
“I was very up and down. I find out it’s throat cancer, I think I could be dying but then I find out, no, it’s very treatable,” she said.
“Then they found the right breast, and when I had the biopsy on the right breast the doctor was saying this doesn’t look great and that’s when she sat down like, oh great, I have another cancer and that’s when I started crying on the table as she’s still poking and getting samples out of my boob and I’m like, oh great, now I have two cancers at the same time that are not related.
“Who else has two cancers at the same time? I’m a great achiever but this is getting ridiculous, following in Chris Evert’s footsteps, who went through cancer a year before with the same place in New York.”
Morgan brought up how Evert, her formal rival, sent her the song “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers, which includes the lyric, “I just might have a problem that you’ll understand.”
“You’re making me cry again,” Navratilova said, tearing up.
The 66-year-old Navratilova won 59 career Grand Slams, including 18 singles titles.
Morgan asked her if she thought that “this could be it” when she was diagnosed with cancer.
“Yeah, I did that weekend when I didn’t know where it was coming from, then you get hopeful when you realize it’s very treatable but still it’s not an easy one to fix, but you definitely come face-to-face with mortality a lot more when you’re 65 compared to when you’re 50 or 55 or whatever I was 52,” she said.
“The bucket list comes into mind of all the things I wanted to do, and this may sound really shallow, but I was like okay which kick-ass car do I really want to drive, if I live like a year, because I love driving, I love being in a great car… that’s what I was thinking about.
“But once the oncologist said no, it’s from your throat and it’s very treatable, then I’m like, okay, so what do we do? You get into tennis mode… that’s where having been a champion athlete comes in pretty handy.”
The loss of appetite was particularly challenging for her to deal with.
“I knew it was going to be hard but I didn’t realize it was going to be as hard as it really was. You know how much I love to eat, as we have had dinner together,” she said.
“I love to eat and eating was the hardest part of this whole treatment. I lost 15 pounds, not because I wanted to but because I just couldn’t get enough food in my body. The radiation, the proton therapy affects your throat and the mouth, and there is a lot going on and it started closing up. I couldn’t even yawn.”
She said that being in the presence of children who were being treated for cancer gave her perspective.
“Reality check. I mean you know everybody that’s there has cancer. You just don’t know which one,” she said.
“So, cancer is very democratic, it totally doesn’t care who you are. We’re all kind of in the same boat but different boats because some they don’t know if they’re going to be cured. I knew my chances were pretty good.
“But when you see kids that’s when you really stop feeling sorry for yourself because what the parents are going through, the kids may not even know what they’re going through, but there were kids that were six-to-eight months old. Toddlers, children, new-borns practically.
“And they have to put them to sleep to do the treatment, so they don’t move. That’s when you don’t feel sorry for yourself anymore, okay you just have to suck it up and deal with it.”
Navratilova said that she and her wife, Julia Lemigova, were considering adopting a child prior to her diagnosis, but the plans were tabled.
“We hired an agency. [Our daughter] Victoria went to live in Europe for the last two years of high school and the emptiness really hit her [Julia]. I’m like go, go. Julia’s like, no come back,” Navratilova said.
“I think it [adoption] was a nice thought for a while, but I think this has brought it into sharp focus — you know, I’m not really the youngest anymore and I don’t want to be the grandmother on the playground, forget that part, there’s just not enough space I think for this to happen.
“So, we were thinking about adopting but that’s definitely put on hold, and I don’t think it’s going to happen. I think it’s just too complicated and the energy — I only have so much right now.”
She got emotional about ringing the bell to signify that she was cancer-free.
“I rang it three times,” Navratilova said, with tears.
“It’s very hard not to cry, sorry. I’m crying just looking at it again because you just can’t wait to ring the bell and I’m still in God’s hands whether or not you’re going to be 100% or not but you hope for the best… I’m going to lose it again… the people there were wonderful people.”