I play a lot of tennis and I follow it closely. I have seen today that Alexandre Muller ranked 84th (from France) has Crohn's. I am a massive fan now I know what he goes through to be able to play.
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Muller is far more than that, though. The 26-year-old is enjoying the best season of his career and serving as an inspiration to plenty of people of all ages throughout the world. At the age of 14, the Frenchman was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease.
“I was just a little bit sick. I went to the doctor, and he gave me some medicine,” Muller recalled. “I was quite young — 14 years old is young — so I kept it to myself for one year. But it was like an inflammation. So after one year, the inflammation was so big and I couldn't move anymore. I lost maybe 10 kilos.
“When I came back to my parents for the weekend, during the night, they heard the toilet like 50 times. So they said, ‘Okay, there is something wrong.’ So I went to the hospital, I did all the exams and everything and they said okay, it's Crohn's disease.”
It was a devastating blow for someone who was entering a key moment in his tennis journey. Muller began playing tennis at the age of six, when his family moved to Meyrargues, a small village in France. There was an old hard court at the home they moved to and Muller’s father, Stefan, refurbished it. Nobody in the family had a history in the sport, but Stefan and Alexandre would play at home.
“At the beginning, I was crying because I was losing with my dad,” Muller said. “But after one or two years he was crying.”
Too good for his father, Muller began playing at a local club and quickly showed potential. Having also played football from a young age, he was told it was necessary to focus on tennis in order to train more. The Frenchman moved to a bigger club in Aix en Provence.
But by his early teens, Crohn’s disease was taking its toll on the Frenchman. His future in tennis seemed in doubt.
“It was not easy because the doctor told me if I wanted to be in good shape, I needed to stop tennis and sports in general. Not [playing] the sport, but when you're a professional tennis player, you practise every day, so it's very hard. I needed to stop it,” Muller said. “I stopped training for maybe two months, I took a lot of cortisone. It's the process with this disease. So now I'm trying to manage it.
“I need to do an injection to myself every two weeks, all my life. So it's not that easy, but I'm trying to manage it.”
The article link
Muller is far more than that, though. The 26-year-old is enjoying the best season of his career and serving as an inspiration to plenty of people of all ages throughout the world. At the age of 14, the Frenchman was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease.
“I was just a little bit sick. I went to the doctor, and he gave me some medicine,” Muller recalled. “I was quite young — 14 years old is young — so I kept it to myself for one year. But it was like an inflammation. So after one year, the inflammation was so big and I couldn't move anymore. I lost maybe 10 kilos.
“When I came back to my parents for the weekend, during the night, they heard the toilet like 50 times. So they said, ‘Okay, there is something wrong.’ So I went to the hospital, I did all the exams and everything and they said okay, it's Crohn's disease.”
It was a devastating blow for someone who was entering a key moment in his tennis journey. Muller began playing tennis at the age of six, when his family moved to Meyrargues, a small village in France. There was an old hard court at the home they moved to and Muller’s father, Stefan, refurbished it. Nobody in the family had a history in the sport, but Stefan and Alexandre would play at home.
“At the beginning, I was crying because I was losing with my dad,” Muller said. “But after one or two years he was crying.”
Too good for his father, Muller began playing at a local club and quickly showed potential. Having also played football from a young age, he was told it was necessary to focus on tennis in order to train more. The Frenchman moved to a bigger club in Aix en Provence.
But by his early teens, Crohn’s disease was taking its toll on the Frenchman. His future in tennis seemed in doubt.
“It was not easy because the doctor told me if I wanted to be in good shape, I needed to stop tennis and sports in general. Not [playing] the sport, but when you're a professional tennis player, you practise every day, so it's very hard. I needed to stop it,” Muller said. “I stopped training for maybe two months, I took a lot of cortisone. It's the process with this disease. So now I'm trying to manage it.
“I need to do an injection to myself every two weeks, all my life. So it's not that easy, but I'm trying to manage it.”
