A door finally opens, the shell splits. Until then not very talkative, drained by a grueling week of training and media requests, Nora Cornolle takes a break and suddenly opens up. “This illness is also part of me, part of my story…” She wants to talk about it, ” to raise awareness “.
Because Saturday evening, under the spotlights of Bercy for this 3e edition of UFC Paris, the 34-year-old from Ile-de-France will not fight alone in the octagon. Hovering above her, a cumbersome, tenacious and difficult to tame life partner: her Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. An autoimmune hormonal disease that almost took away a piece of his dream. “It was a nightmare… I was incomprehensible for a long time, in my madness. » The mechanics of memories have been reactivated. Let’s rewind.
Hell before light?
At the dawn of 2019, Nora Cornolle is far from the lights of the UFC, the world’s largest MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) organization. At the time, the fighter from a large dormitory town in the north-east of Épinay-sur-Seine (Seine-Saint-Denis) satisfied her taste for castagne – her “favorite form of expression since childhood” – in Thai boxing, where she collected national titles (5), until becoming European champion.
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An all-consuming career undermined overnight, at almost 30 years old… “The illness lay dormant within me from the start. She woke up, probably after an emotional shockshe tries to elaborate. It took me a while to understand it. » Unexplained weight gain, hair loss, dizziness, extreme fatigue, mood swings, in addition to acute endometriosis… “The combo caused excruciating seizures. » And the machine, so well oiled until then, goes wrong…
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