Brain tumor, surgery, chemo – comeback!
Para-Star dares a fresh start after a horror diagnosis
3/30/2022, 4:39 p.m
Elena Semechin is at the peak of her career when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor last October. But the swim star doesn’t give up and returns to the pool in the midst of her chemotherapy. “I’m still here,” she says, dreaming of the Para World Cup in June.
Elena Semechin has always been “very grateful,” she emphasizes. However, the successful operation on her brain tumor made her “even more grateful” and awakened an irrepressible desire for life. That’s why the visually impaired Paralympic champion from Tokyo doesn’t want to wait any longer to make her comeback. On Thursday at 12.40 p.m. at the International German Championships in Berlin, the 28-year-old will climb 100 meters chest into the pool in the preliminary run over her gold course – although the second cycle of her chemotherapy has only just been completed.
“I don’t want cancer to determine my everyday life. I want to be the boss of my life myself,” says Semechin. Your start is “a sign that I’m still here. I’m still here and won’t go away anytime soon – despite my cancer.”
Semechin, née Krawzow, was on a high when her cancer diagnosis took the rug out from under her feet last October. The gold medal in the showcase – and then the deep emotional fall. A high-risk operation in the upper left brain hemisphere was the only option. She married her longtime friend and trainer Phillip Semechin shortly before the surgery.
“I was very afraid of personality changes as a result of the surgery. But everything went well – at least that’s what the others claim,” she says with a laugh and adds: “Now you appreciate every minute you’re allowed to live. And since I don’t As long as I live longer, I want to enjoy every minute even more now and not put it off until later.”
Dream destination World Cup on Madeira
Her prognosis sounds devastating: “I still have to do ten months of chemo and then we’ll see.” The probability is “very high” that the cancer will come back in 10 to 15 years. Semechin has not regretted for a second that she made her diagnosis public in the fall. She had received a lot of encouragement, and many cancer patients had contacted her and thanked her because they “didn’t feel so alone anymore”.
Now she wants to know. The Para World Championships in Madeira in June, for which she is already qualified, is “the big goal”. The German championships are the last chance to compete beforehand and the chance to “test myself and see if I can still swim competitively after the operation”. And after the last five days of chemo, of which she has not been able to train in the last three. “I was really flat there, nothing worked,” she says. But Semechin doesn’t want to let that stop him. She’s the boss.