Canadian tennis pro Gabriela Dabrowski battled through Wimbledon and the Paris Olympics amid treatment for breast cancer, she revealed in a social media post Tuesday.
“I know this will come as a shock to many, but I am okay and will be okay,” the 32-year-old three-time Grand Slam champion wrote on Instagram. “Early detection saves lives.”
Dabrowski said she was diagnosed in mid-April, roughly a year after she first felt a lump in her left breast during a self-exam. A doctor at the time told her not to worry, but when the lump seemed to have grown when she completed her physicals for the Women’s Tennis Association Tour, a doctor suggested she get it checked out.
After a mammogram and an ultrasound yielded concerning results, Dabrowski had a biopsy on the mass, which came back positive for cancer.
“The preliminary results came back that day: cancer,” she wrote. “These are words you never expect to hear, and in an instant your life or the life of a loved one turns upside down.”
Dabrowski had two surgeries soon after, leaving her unable for a time to lift her arm high enough to toss the ball in the air for her serve, she said. Yet she returned to competition in June for the Rothesay Open Nottingham, where she and her partner, Erin Routliffe, won women’s doubles.
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She delayed further treatment to compete at Wimbledon and the Paris Olympics, winning bronze in mixed doubles.
“It all seems surreal,” she added, reflecting on the season’s incomparable highs and lows.
Dabrowski said she’s sharing her story now, despite a strong initial inclination “to figure everything out and handle things privately,” because she’s grateful for her early detection and felt the need to contribute to others’ cancer journeys in a positive way.
“Please know I am fully aware of how lucky I am as well,” she wrote, “because many do not get the luxury of being able to tell their story at all.”
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The Olympian said she’s deeply grateful to now call herself a cancer survivor, adding that it’s shifted her mindset considerably.
“If you saw me smiling more on the court in the past 6 months, it was genuine,” she wrote. “That wasn’t always the case. … When the threat of losing everything I’d worked for my entire life became a real possibility, only then did I begin to authentically appreciate what I had.”
She closed: “To cancer I say fuck you, but also, thank you.”