ELena Krawzow has already 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 exact 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 of the German Press Agency. 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.”
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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 Disability and the struggle over swimming to lead a full, happy and contented life.
“I want to get married before 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 will be someone else after the operation.” Have the happiness, motivation and drive gone? A horror performance. “That I’ll be someone else for the time being after the operation will probably be the first time. But I want to be back the way 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.
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. “
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Swimming will help her, her “way into the world”: “Swimming was my chance for life. I could make something of myself, independently determine my life. I’ve achieved everything I could dream of. ”And hopefully there will be so much more to come.
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