Canadian tennis star Gabriela Dabrowski revealed she was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2024 in a post to social media.
Dabrowski, 32, said that she slightly delayed some of her treatment to be able to complete at Wimbledon and the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
"In the spring of 2023 I felt a lump in my left breast during a self-exam. A few months later, a doctor told me it was nothing and not to worry. So I didn’t. Time went on, and in spring 2024, I thought the lump was a little bigger," Dabrowski wrote on Instagram.
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"During our WTA comprehensive physicals, a WTA doctor told me she wasn’t sure what it was, and to go and get it scanned… A phone call from the radiologist reading the images, alerting me to a lump that did not look like a cyst due to its uneven edging and shading. ‘It looks ugly and I want you get a biopsy immediately.’"
"The following morning I went into Advent Health Hospital in Wesley Chapel and had a biopsy of my left breast. The preliminary results came back that day: cancer. 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 said she is choosing to share her story now because for a long time, she "wasn’t ready to expose myself to the possible attention and questions I’d have gotten before."
The star tennis player wanted to "figure everything out and handle things privately."
"Fast forward through 2 surgeries at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, recovery, rehab, @patrickdaciek tossing the ball for on my serve because my left arm couldn’t raise high enough (this was 2 weeks before Nottingham) slight delay in further treatment to be able to compete at Wimbledon and the Olympics, radiation + fatigue (between Toronto and US Open), and starting endocrine therapy, ending the season on the highest note possible… it all seems surreal."
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Despite battling breast cancer, Dabrowski not only competed in Wimbledon and the Olympics, but had a lot of success.
Dabrowski and her doubles partner Erin Routliffe lost in the Wimbledon finals, and in the Paris Olympics, she won a bronze medal in the mixed doubles competition for Canada.
"My intentions in sharing some of my experience are to emphasize the quality of life one can maintain when cancer is detected early, when you have access to doctors and other health care practitioners who are highly skilled and dedicated to their craft, when you take care of your mental, physical, and spiritual well-being, and when you surround yourself with people who truly have your back (and your front)," Dabrowski wrote.
"Early on in my diagnosis I was afraid of cancer becoming a part of identity forever. I don’t feel that way anymore. It is a privilege to be able call myself a survivor."
Dabrowski said her diagnosis gave her an opportunity to see challenges through a different lens, "a lens of gratitude."
She ended her post saying, "To cancer I say f--- you, but also, thank you."
Dabrowski won three doubles titles in 2024 and has won 17 doubles titles in her career.
Dabrowski is also a three-time Olympian, competing in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
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