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Parenting & Family Quote by Alonzo Mourning

"Once my doctor began treating my kidney disease, my greatest challenge was the constant exhaustion. Fortunately, my doctor explained that anemia was causing my exhaustion and that people with serious illnesses, like kidney disease, may be at increased risk for anemia"

About this Quote

Fatigue is the stealth villain in most illness narratives, and Alonzo Mourning names it with the plainspoken authority of someone whose job once depended on stamina. The quote frames kidney disease not as a single, cinematic crisis but as a grinding daily reality: “constant exhaustion” as the true opponent. That choice matters. For an elite athlete, exhaustion isn’t just discomfort; it’s identity-threatening. It’s the body refusing the story you’re used to telling about it.

The pivot to “Fortunately” signals the real intent: reassurance through explanation. Mourning isn’t offering inspirational grit here; he’s modeling a different kind of strength - the willingness to accept clinical language as a tool, not a verdict. Anemia becomes the missing diagnosis that turns a scary, amorphous symptom into something legible and treatable. The subtext is educational, almost public-service: don’t moralize your fatigue, don’t assume it’s weakness, ask what’s driving it.

Context matters, too. When a famous athlete talks about chronic illness, he’s speaking to a culture trained to equate health with discipline and sickness with personal failure. By emphasizing that “people with serious illnesses…may be at increased risk,” he shifts the frame from individual blame to systemic vulnerability. It’s a quietly political move: credibility borrowed from sports celebrity, spent on normalizing complication, follow-up care, and the idea that understanding your body is part of surviving it.

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TopicHealth
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Mourning, Alonzo. (2026, January 17). Once my doctor began treating my kidney disease, my greatest challenge was the constant exhaustion. Fortunately, my doctor explained that anemia was causing my exhaustion and that people with serious illnesses, like kidney disease, may be at increased risk for anemia. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/once-my-doctor-began-treating-my-kidney-disease-46066/

Chicago Style
Mourning, Alonzo. "Once my doctor began treating my kidney disease, my greatest challenge was the constant exhaustion. Fortunately, my doctor explained that anemia was causing my exhaustion and that people with serious illnesses, like kidney disease, may be at increased risk for anemia." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/once-my-doctor-began-treating-my-kidney-disease-46066/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Once my doctor began treating my kidney disease, my greatest challenge was the constant exhaustion. Fortunately, my doctor explained that anemia was causing my exhaustion and that people with serious illnesses, like kidney disease, may be at increased risk for anemia." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/once-my-doctor-began-treating-my-kidney-disease-46066/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.

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Anemia and fatigue in kidney disease - Alonzo Mourning
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Alonzo Mourning (born February 8, 1970) is a Athlete from USA.

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