Sean Elliott and Alonzo Mourning shared the basketball court on occasion during their overlapping NBA careers, but they have more than just a sport in common. After battling kidney disease for years, both men had to step away from their beloved sport to undergo kidney transplants. Now healthy, thriving and dedicated to promoting awareness of the disease, Elliott and Mourning shared their stories with Black Voices in honor of National Kidney Month and World Kidney Day.

When Mourning was playing for the Miami Heat in 2000, he went to the doctor for a required physical after feeling lethargic. He had chalked it up to not eating right or being tired after participating in the Summer Olympics. In actuality, it was his kidney disease making its presence known. Just three years later, he found out that he needed to go on dialysis and undergo a kidney transplant.

"It was very, very tough to digest," he said, "I was totally in denial, and I felt that, like all the other injuries I had in my life, I could beat it."
Mourning said he mistakenly put his focus on getting back on the basketball court instead of getting better.

"Like so many athletes," he said, "I thought about our sport before I thought about my health, not realizing that your health is the driving force behind all the things you want to do in life. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything."

Elliott played -- mostly for the San Antonio Spurs -- for six years after being diagnosed with his disease in 1993. By 1999, he had become so sick that he needed to leave basketball to get a transplant. He said he knows now that it was abnormal to play while he was so sick, but he didn't realize that while he was in the game.

"If you wake up and you feel one percent worse each morning, you don't really notice it unless you have a major downhill crash," Elliott said. "After I got my transplant, it was like turning on a light switch. I couldn't believe how much better I felt, but what it showed me was how bad I actually was and how bad I was feeling."

Both Elliott and Mourning were lucky enough to have options when it came to finding a kidney donor -- they each received a kidney from a family donor. Mourning said people with various motives were "coming out of the woodwork" to donate kidneys to a famous athlete, but he's quick to point out that not everyone is so lucky.

"You're offering to donate your kidney to me, but there are 80,000 people waiting on transplant lists across the country," Mourning said. "That's not even including ones who aren't on the list. You have 20 million Americans who suffer from chronic kidney disease. A large portion of those are African Americans."

The key to combating kidney disease -- and keeping yourself from reaching the point where you'll need dialysis and a transplant -- is education and regular checkups, Elliott and Mourning say. If you catch kidney disease early enough, you can prevent it from progressing.

Elliott, who works with the National Kidney Foundation to promote kidney disease awareness, stressed that paying special attention to high blood pressure, which disproportionately affects African Americans and is linked to kidney disease and heart disease, is important.

"If you have high blood pressure, especially if you're a minority, you better get your kidneys checked," Elliott said. "You can't blow it off."

Mourning is using his charity, Zo's Fund For Life, and his new memoir, 'Resilience,' to educate people about kidney disease and tell his personal story.

"Through this whole process, I've been able to educate myself in so many different ways," Mourning said. "In turn, I feel like I've inspired other people to help them take better care of themselves."

For More Information:

World Kidney Day
National Kidney Foundation
African Americans & Kidney Disease
Chronic Kidney Disease: Causes, Symptoms & Treatment