By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Kim Tillie had the biggest scare of his life last season, but in the face of the surprising health issue, he remained strong and disciplined, defeated the testicular tumor, and returned to the court to continue fighting for Cholet.
Talking to the French media, the former player of Olympiacos and Baskonia among others recalled his battle with the illness, from how he discovered it to the complete recovery.
“I thought it might be a cyst, something benign. We tell ourselves it’s impossible and only happens to others, not us. It was a blow to the head when he told me what it was. It’s very scary when someone talks to you about a tumor,” Tillie said, as BeBasket reports.
He remembers trying to find athletes who faced similar issues but couldn’t find many. Kim read about Nene Hilario’s struggles, but the story of the Cote d’Ivoire footballer player Sebastian Haller gave him hope and strength to endure.
“I tried to see who else had this, but I really couldn’t find much information on the internet. It’s great what Haller did. It really gave me strength because it was worse with him. It had spread to his abdomen, and he had to have surgery there too,” the 35-year-old added, explaining why he wanted to go public with his troubles: “I decided it was a good opportunity to testify, to convey a message so that it could help one or two people to go get checked just in case. An appointment takes 10 minutes“.
He postponed the surgery to help Cholet in the FIBA Europe Cup semifinals:
“I have rarely seen La Meilleraie like that; I drummed in front of the supporters, and the pitch was invaded. I was still able to experience it to the fullest because you forget everything else, even a tumor, when you play basketball. It’s when the match is over that we say to ourselves: ‘Oh shit, tomorrow I’m having surgery’”.
After surgery, three weeks of recovery came, and he could soon start training again. However, a month later, after the procedure, when he was almost ready to play, biopsy results showed that the tumor had started to spread. It’s an aggressive cancer, and preventive chemotherapy was recommended.
“Second blow. That was really the hardest part,” Tillie recalls. “The oncologist warned me it would be okay because I was athletic and young. I have taken all prescribed anti-nausea medications, and they are helpful. In fact, during the first few days, things weren’t too bad. I just felt a little nauseous and dizzy and lost my appetite. Teammates came to see me, my parents, too; I had visitors; it helps to get through the weather.”
As a consequence of the chemotherapy, he lost all his hair.
“I lost all my hair everywhere: beard, hair, I had nothing left. When I returned home for the weekend, I had like a hangover, with everything at the same time: COVID, fever, dizziness. It was horrible. The operation was okay in itself, but it was the chemo that really knocked me to the ground.”
Recovery wasn’t easy as well.
“I hadn’t done any sport for 6-8 weeks. I started training gradually between June and July to be ready at the beginning of August for the return to Cholet. I’ve had much worse injuries, like my complete adductor rupture with Olympiakos in 2017/18. There, it had been really complicated. In the event, I recovered as if it were any sort of injury really. We just had to get back into general shape, cardio, muscles.”
Luckily, all seems fine now. Tillie’s biannual check-up on March 7, with a scan and consultation with the urologist, gave the French player good results and peace of mind. The experienced power forward played 15 games in French BetClic Elite and appeared in 12 Basketball Champions League matches for Cholet this season.
“If I had been born 100 years ago, I would actually be dead. That’s what’s crazy…,” Kim Tillie concludes.
Photo: fiba.basketball