NEW YORK — A report says tennis great Martina Navratilova has been diagnosed with breast cancer and that her prognosis is said to be excellent.
People magazine’s Web site posted a story Wednesday quoting Navratilova saying “I cried” after being informed of the diagnosis following a routine mammogram.
The report says Navratilova had a lumpectomy and will begin six weeks of radiation therapy next month. It added that the nine-time Wimbledon women’s singles champion was diagnosed with a noninvasive form of breast cancer called ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS.
A surgeon at UC San Francisco says DCIS strikes almost 70,000 American women a year and that “there’s only a one-percent chance of anyone with this diagnosis would die of breast cancer.”
Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” today, the former Aspen resident said she was diagnosed in February. Reflecting on the day she learned she had cancer, Navratilova referred to it as her “personal 9/11.”
“I was devastated,” she said on GMA.
Navratilova, 53, told interviewer Robin Roberts, herself is a breast cancer survivor, that she underwent a lumpectomy, and that doctors concluded the cancer had not spread to her lymph nodes. There is a “very small chance” of the cancer recurring, she said.
“It is just in that one breast,” Navratilova told GMA. “I’m OK and I’ll make a full recovery.”
Navratilova left tennis in 1994 after winning 167 singles titles. In 2006, a month shy of her 50th birthday, she closed her competitive career by winning the mixed doubles championship at the U.S. Open for her 59th Grand Slam title.
Navratilova won six straight Wimbledon singles titles from 1982 to 1987.
