Tennis great Martina Navratilova said she is “cancer-free” nearly four months after announcing she had been diagnosed with throat and breast cancer.

The Czech-American, who won a total of 59 grand slam titles across singles and doubles and is considered among one the greatest players of all time, had said in January that the cancer was in Stage 1.

“As far as they know, I’m cancer-free,” the 66-year-old told Piers Morgan for TalkTV in an excerpt of an interview to be released later on Tuesday.

“I still need to do the right breast probably with radiation but only for a couple of weeks and that’s more preventative than anything else.”

The cancer was discovered in November last year. She was previously diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010 and recovered.

Describing how she felt when she was diagnosed with the disease this time, Navratilova said: “I was in a total panic for three days thinking I may not see next Christmas.

“The bucket list came into my mind of all the things I wanted to do. And this may sound really shallow, but I was like, ‘Okay, which kick-a** car do I really want to drive if I live like a year?’ ”

Navratilova revealed that she sought medical attention when she noticed a change in her neck during the WTA finals in Fort Worth last November.

“I noticed that my left lymph node was enlarged and I thought it was from a shingles vaccine I’d had a week before,” she told Morgan. “But then a couple of weeks on, it didn’t go down so I called the doctor.”

Once biopsy confirmed that she had cancer, she said the treatment plan was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done” because it included radiation treatment every day for three weeks and three rounds of weekly chemotherapy.

“That was the hard part because the first week was both chemo and radiation at the same time,” she said.

“When you start feeling lousy, you’re not sure if it’s from the chemo or the proton. I didn’t really feel the proton until week three, but then you get a sore mouth and your throat starts closing.”

“Everything’s swollen and very uncomfortable, and the proton makes your saliva weird. You don’t really taste things the right way.

“Chemo does the same thing to your throat, but then it makes it dry. So you’re just hit from all ends, and I don’t think the doctors do a very good job of telling you how the s*** is going to hit the fan.”

Written with inputs from Reuters