Serena Williams Has Incredibly Cheated Death Not Once, but Twice

Since 2011, Serena Williams has won 11 Grand Slam events. That year is significant in Williams’s career journey because that’s when her life almost tragically ended.

It started in July 2010 when Williams was involved in a bizarre accident at a German restaurant when a waiter dropped a glass near her feet, which were exposed in slippers

because she had received a pedicure earlier in the day. The glass cut both of her feet, tore a ligament in one, and required a pair of surgeries to correct.

In March 2011 after returning to LA following a visit to her foot doctor in New York, that’s when things got scary and she started having difficulty breathing. She was in the middle of a pulmonary embolism episode, which, if left untreated, has a mortality rate of almost 30 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Instead of going to an Oscars party, Serena Williams was rushed to an LA hospital.

“At first, people said it would be fine, it would be all right, but it turned out to be a lot more serious,” Williams told The Guardian. “If it had been left two days later, it could have been career-ending – or even worse. They told me I had several blood clots in both lungs. I was on my death bed at one point — quite literally.”