Serena Williams, the former women’s No 1 and 13-times grand slam singles champion, has said that she does not expect her recent health crisis to have any impact on her tennis.
Williams suffered a pulmonary embolism in February and then a blood clot on her lung that required emergency surgery at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles a week ago, just a day after she made a public appearance at a post-Oscars party in Hollywood.
“Luckily, I was able to catch it soon enough that my career won’t be affected,” Williams said. “I love tennis and now more than anything I have so much to look forward to just playing. I really just want to come back and do well.”
Williams has been out of action since winning Wimbledon in July 2010. She stepped on broken glass in a restaurant in Munich shortly after the championships, and has undergone two further operations on her foot over the last year.
After having a CT scan which found multiple blood clots on her lungs recently, Williams was immediately checked into hospital.
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“I could not breathe. I remember thinking, I’m walking but I cannot breathe,” the 29-year-old added. “They had to check me in immediately or it wasn’t going to be a good result.”
It was also discovered that medication she was taking to thin the blood resulted in her developing a large hematoma.
She said: “What started as a golf ball ended up being a grapefruit on my stomach. I had to get it drained. When I got there they said, we can’t drain it, we have to surgically remove it.”
But despite all her setbacks, Williams, who is sixth on the women’s all-time Grand Slam singles title list, remains upbeat about her career.
“I’m taking it a day at a time,” she said. “My lungs are fairly healthy and I’m just on the road to recovery.”