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Mourning not giving up hope of rejoining Heat this season

MIAMI (AP) -- Miami Heat center Alonzo Mourning says the kidney ailment that sidelined him again this season left him on the verge of needing dialysis.

Routine test results a month before the start of training camp revealed that his condition had deteriorated.

"The results were 'Oh-my-God' bad," Mourning told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for a story published Thursday. "They were bad to the point where basketball was totally not an issue at all.

"They were to the point where I was at the verge of being at that next step kidney patients talk about not reaching. I was next to that level -- not transplantation, but possibly dialysis -- if I had let things continue on that course."

In the past month and a half, results from weekly tests have been only a bit more favorable.

"We're at a midpoint," Mourning said. "They're a whole lot better than they were before. In a month and a half's time, my body has responded drastically, from a level that was very scary, to getting back to a level you can just exhale now."

Mourning hopes to rejoin the Heat this season, but offers no predictions about a comeback.

"We're not ruling out this season," Mourning said. "Come next month, if, all of a sudden, my body starts responding the way the doctors want it to, such a thing could be considered."

Without Mourning, the Heat are off to a 1-5 start, their worst since 1994.

Mourning, 32, was diagnosed in October 2000 with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a kidney disease that can eventually require a transplant. He played in just the final 13 games that season but played in 75 games last season and made the All-Star team for the seventh time.

 

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