Olympic swimming royalty Ariarne Titmus has experienced countless highs over the course of her career, but behind closed doors she’s also been through some incredibly difficult challenges.
Over a year on from her surgery to remove two tumours from her ovary, the 24-year-old has vulnerably opened up on her health battle.
Just eight months before Ariarne Titmus dove off the starting blocks at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, she underwent surgery to remove two ovarian tumours.
While she was nervous about doing it so close to such a big and important event, she revealed she wants to be a mother more than anything else and knew it needed to be done.
“I would give up every gold medal I’ve ever won to have a child. I just have such maternal instincts and I think the fear of potentially that becoming harder by the prospect of losing the ovary was really tough. I’m so lucky that I’ve got the best mum in the world and I just want to be that one day,” she revealed on the Inherited podcast.
“It was really, really challenging and I was battling in my head. Post-surgery, one side of me being like, ‘let your body heal, let your body get better because you need to let yourself recover’. And then the other part of my brain was like, ‘no, you only have eight months. You’ve got to get going’.
“You know, I had my coach pushing me and everyday checking like, ‘how’s it feeling? How’s it feeling?’ Cause when you get something like, you know, your abdominal walls cut open, it takes a while to heal. And especially swimming is such a core dominant sport.
“It was really, really, really challenging, but I think it put, um, I’m actually glad it happened because it made me have a different outlook on life.”
Ariarne vulnerably decided to speak publicly about her surgery and health journey back in September 2023 via a statement on her Instagram page.
“Sometimes as an athlete you think you’re immune to real life health problems. We’re too busy keeping our body in check to perform and push ourselves day in and day out,” she began her post.
“For a while I’ve been managing an ongoing hip injury, and 3 weeks ago I had an MRI to suss out exactly what was going on. Sure enough, there was a little something with the hip of which is completely manageable. However, it was something else that the doctors picked up on that made everything else seem irrelevant.
“A large growth was found on my right ovary. For anyone that knows me, they’d know I’d give up anything in the world to be a mother, it’s my biggest dream.. So this was a scary time for me. Of course in these moments you think of the worst case scenario, and I was petrified of potentially losing the ovary or there being implications that could affect me and my desire to have children one day.
“However, I am one of the lucky ones. My ovary was 8.5x7cm in size and contained 2 benign tumours called dermoids, both 4cm in size. Yesterday I had surgery and they were removed safely. I’m feeling well and relieved they are out.
“Being an athlete is tough. Being a woman is tough. In the past month I’ve learnt more about my body and what it is capable of. I’ve learnt that being fit and healthy doesn’t mean you’re immune to these things. I feel blessed that I found these tumours before they got even bigger and started to have real implications on my health,” she wrote.
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