DOHA: Alonzo Mourning said his strong mentality played a significant role in overcoming a life-threatening kidney disease in 2000, which later allowed him to make a comeback and win the NBA championship title with Miami Heat in 2006.
Mourning, recalled the moments where he had just won the Olympic gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Games after experiencing pain which was later confirmed as focal segmental glomerulosclerosis.
“When the doctor said I needed a kidney transplant, it deflated me. I started doing all my research trying to educate myself what was going on in my body. I was still in somewhat denial because I always take a positive approach to things. Life as we know it has a lot of landmarks. When I was diagnosed, my mental approach was if I give up in my mind then my body will follow. That goes on to show how powerful your mind is. There are some people out there who heal themselves by just keeping themselves strong. At times, I would talk to the disease ‘saying you are not going to win’. It kind of sounds kind of weird but I did that,” said Mourning during the ‘Stars Chat’ session at Aspire4Sport yesterday.
He added: “Fortunately I had my second cousin who gave me a kidney which saved my life. When I had my transplant, many people told me to retire or give up the sport. If I had listened to them I would never have won a title. So I asked my doctors what I should do and my doctor said if you heal up in when we expect you to heal up, you can possibly come back and play. That was all I needed to hear. I started the process of slowly getting myself back on the court again.”
The former Heat player, who scored more than 14,000 points during his 16-year career, said how he made a young boy, who had a heart and kidney transplant, smile for the first time in two months, when he was being treated in hospital.
He said: “After my transplant, I started talking to God. I was in my weakest state that I could remember for a long time. I said to him that ‘I will use my experience to help as many people as I can to get through any physical obastcles’.”
“Then the doctor walks in and said you have to start walking. When I started walking, I saw people with transplants, and I saw a 13-year-old who had a heart and kidney transplant and we both smiled. His mother came to my room and said thank you for making my son smile for two months. Instead of feeling sorry for yourself, understand that people out there has got it worse than you do,” added Mourning, who has his own organisation to help people deal with kidney diseases and
transplants. THE PENINSULA/DP
