Monica Seles, the Serbian-American tennis star who has won nine Grand Slam titles, opened up to international media in August that she had been diagnosed with the rare autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis in 2022.
Seles’s sporting achievements in tennis were brought to a wider audience in 1994 after she was stabbed by a fan fixated on her competitor at an event in Germany. What followed was two years of medical and psychological treatment.
Prior to the stabbing, she reached the finals of all four majors in 1992, winning three of them. She won the Australian Open for the third straight time months before the stabbing.
Time on the court
While after the attack she returned to the court, where she won another Grand Slam title, she retired in 2008, still reeling from what had happened. She would go on to occasionally play at exhibitions and mentor young players but mostly retreated from the public eye - even more so after 2019.
“When I became No. 1, it was a huge reset because everybody treats you differently. Then obviously, when I got stabbed, that was a huge reset. And then when I was diagnosed, it was a huge reset,” she told the New York Times.
“After my stabbing, I had to deal with that internally for quite a few years to process it and my MG diagnosis was kind of very similar,” she said. “I had to understand my new normal of day-to-day life, what I can do work-wise and different things.”
The now-51-year-old player explained to the New York Times that she started experiencing double vision, and extreme weakness in her limbs. She would see two balls on the tennis court on the occasions she felt well enough to play.
"I would be playing (tennis) with some kids or family members, and I would miss a ball," Seles said, according to The Guardian. "I was like, ‘Yeah, I see two balls.' These are obviously symptoms that you can't ignore.
"And, for me, this is when this journey started. And it took me quite some time to really absorb it, speak openly about it, because it's a difficult one. It affects my day-to-day life quite a lot.
Delayed by the pandemic, Seles received a diagnosis of MG in 2022.
The rare disease, which sees the immune system attack the neuromuscular junction, impacts only 150 to 200 people per million worldwide.
“When I first got my diagnosis, I’d never heard of it in the news or from anybody else,” Seles told the New York Times.
"My MG journey over the past 5 years has not been an easy one," Seles said in a statement through argenx, a company partnering with Seles to raise awareness at the upcoming US Open. "I felt isolated and defeated as many of the activities I enjoyed were no longer physically possible for me. I've since realized that by sharing my story, I can raise awareness of this disease, empower patients to advocate for themselves and help them connect with the MG community for support."