Saturday 30th October 2021
Tumor operation for para-star Krawzow
The biggest fight of her life
Elena Krawzow has had to fight many fights. The greatest is now ahead of her. A brain tumor has to get out. And that only nine weeks after their gold triumph in Tokyo. The chance for a cure is there. But also the fear of not being who she is anymore.
Elena Krawzow has had to overcome a few strokes of fate, but now the 28-year-old is going into the “greatest fight of her life”. After the shock news of a brain tumor, the diagnosis was made: the Paralympic winner had a benign, but diffuse grade II astrocytoma in the left upper frontal lobe. “I am happy that I can live. It could also have been that I only have a few months left,” said Elena Krawzow. Next Wednesday, just nine weeks after her gold triumph in Tokyo, the visually impaired swimmer will be operated on at the Charité in Berlin: “I’m fighting for my life.”
In an interview on Thursday, two days after her 28th birthday, the doctors told her that the chances of a cure were good. But the truth is also: it is likely that the tumor cannot be completely removed, chemotherapy and radiation will follow. And also that the tumor can come back and mutate.
She is not afraid of the thing in her head. It now belongs to her and her biography like her refugee story from Kazakhstan to Russia, then on to Germany, life in very poor circumstances, the creeping onset of the hereditary disease Stargardt’s disease, through which she can only see a good two percent, the exclusion through the handicap and the struggle over swimming to a full, happy and contented life.
“Afraid that I will be someone else after the operation”
Elena Kravzov is rather afraid that she will no longer be herself after the operation. Because where the tumor is located, there are also areas that define a person’s personality. “I’m afraid that I’ll be someone else after the operation.” Gone are the happiness, motivation and drive? A horror performance. “That I’ll be someone else for the first time after the operation will probably be the first time. But I want to be back as I am, full of joie de vivre.”
Elena Krawzow, who only learned to swim at the age of 13 thanks to her “soul mate” and sponsor Michael Heuer, already had the first symptoms such as dizziness and headaches in Tokyo before her gold run over 100 meters chest. So she blamed it on the climate and the circumstances. Back in Germany it got worse and worse, sometimes the headache was so hammering that she could no longer walk. Then she knew something was wrong. The day she bought the wedding rings with her friend and trainer Phillip Semechin, she got the bitter diagnosis after an MRI in the evening: There is something in her head.
“I was still completely euphoric about the Paralympics and my gold medal, I was full of emotions, my life was just wonderful and everything is different from one second to the next,” said Krawzow. She was hit by cloud nine on the ground. She doesn’t want pity, support and encouragement, yes.
Wedding before the operation
Above all, her boyfriend Phillip, whom she wants to marry before the operation if possible, gives her strength. Hopefully, if the registry office cooperates, on Monday, because on Tuesday she has to go to the hospital to prepare for the operation. “Getting married before that would mean a lot to me.”
What does she wish for except to wake up to the life-affirming and happy Elena that she is? “I’m always a bit megalomaniac and radical when it comes to that. I want to fight for the title at the World Cup next summer,” says Elena Krawzow. “My attitude is not only in my head, but also in my heart. I am convinced that my inner strength will be so strong that I can do it all.”
Swimming will help her, her “way into the world”: “Swimming was my chance for life. I was able to make something of myself, to determine my life independently. I have achieved everything I could dream of.” And hopefully there is so much more to come.