Credit: Janet Mayer/Startraksphoto
Martina Navratilova it is “cancer free.”
Just months after being diagnosed with terminal breast and throat cancer, the 66-year-old tennis star and his wife Real Housewives of Miami star Julia Lemigova50, has confirmed his health battle has wound down.
“As far as they know I am cancer-free,” Martina declared during the emotional interview Piers MorganTalkTV, via The Sun.
While Martina still has a few more weeks of radiation to treat her breasts, she says that once it’s done, she “has to go.”
Back in November last year, more than ten years after she beat breast cancer for the first time, Martina noticed that one of her lymph nodes was enlarged and finally called the doctor, who diagnosed her with stage one throat cancer before discovering an 8mm tumor in her right breast.
“It’s the first week of December, [I’m thinking] I’ll see this Christmas, but maybe not the next one,” said Martina, noting that the double cancer diagnosis has caused her to “go down and down.”
“I panicked for a total of three days thinking I couldn’t see next Christmas,” she shared. “A bucket list went through my mind of everything I wanted. And this might sound really shallow, but I was like, okay, ‘Which kick – what car do I want if I live like a year?’
Fortunately, despite the grim diagnosis, Martina was told by doctors that her cancer was “curable” and gave her a 95 percent chance of a full recovery.
“[It was a] great, great relief, but emotionally I have been up and down because of what the first doctor told me, “he explained. “I knew it was throat cancer, I thought I could die, but then I realized, no, it can be treated. Then when I did a biopsy on my right breast the doctor said, ‘This doesn’t look good.’ That’s when I started crying on the table because he was still poking and taking samples out of the milk. And I was like, ‘Oh great, now I have two cancers at the same time that are unrelated. Who else has two cancers at the same time?’”
Although Martina’s cancer battle is only months away, she and Julia plan to make it last forever.
“We were waiting for the call to welcome a child home and then fight two cancers,” recalls Julia. “So today, the first thing I think about is getting Martina healthy and strong, and we’ll see what happens.”
But Martina seemed to shrug off the idea, saying: “I don’t think it’s going to happen. I think it’s too complicated and I just have so much energy right now.
Looking ahead to her treatment, which included radiation daily for three weeks and three chemotherapy treatments per week, Martina said she “didn’t know it was going to be as difficult as it really was.”
“It just hits you from all ends and I don’t think the doctors do a very good job of telling you how the sh-t is going to hit the fan,” he shared.
However, after seeing children in the hospital being treated with the same treatment, Martina stopped feeling sad and decided to “suck it up and deal with it.”
“When you look at the kids, you stop feeling sad for what the parents are going through,” he said.
According to Julia, she is “very proud” of the way Martina endured the treatment with “very strength and positivity.”
“When his wife is diagnosed with cancer – and especially two cancers – it changes the perspective of life. Everything that seemed important suddenly became insignificant,” he said.
Part three of Real Housewives of Miami season five reunion begins streaming this Friday, March 23, on Peacock.