The scare came during Taylor Townsend’s run at the Guadalajara Open in September, days after she won the US Open women’s doubles title with Katerina Siniakova, completing her career Grand Slam. Waking at 2:30 in the morning with severe abdominal pain ahead of a scheduled round-of-16 match against top seed Marta Kostyuk, Townsend initially assumed she had food poisoning and called her physio to her hotel room so she could manage through it and still play that afternoon. That’s where the physio’s job became crucial. 

Instead of just treating Townsend’s pain normally so that she could compete later in the day, the physio ran an appendix test, which immediately revealed that something was wrong. Ultimately, she had to go through emergency appendix removal surgery. 

Two weeks after surgery, that same physio is now helping her rebuild her fitness, and the American has shared the progress on her social media. In recent Instagram stories, she went for a 20-minute run, and while running, she said it feels “good,” alongside focused sessions on abdominal wall rehabilitation. 

One update featured her doing bracing and core activation exercises with her recovery team. Another story showed her balancing on a Bosu ball and doing squats on it, part of the rebuilding process before she is cleared to return to full training.

Townsend’s physiotherapist has turned out to be far more than just part of her traveling support team. If she had tried to fight through and play that afternoon, there was a danger that she could have ruptured her appendix during the game, making an already serious situation a life-threatening one. 

“I was feeling so terrible and the physio came and then did an appendix test and said, ‘I don’t like that,'” Townsend recalled on the Good Morning America show. “Then the doctor came to my room. He did something and he was like, ‘Oh I don’t like that. You need to go to the hospital.'” ‘

An ultrasound confirmed her appendix was inflamed, and doctors moved quickly. “They were like, ‘We have to do emergency surgery, like we need to do the surgery.'” 

When will Taylor Townsend return?

The American was taken to the hospital in Houston for the emergency appendectomy within hours, and her posts from the hospital in the following days showed how shaken and resilient she felt. 

It is standard post-operation regimen that you cannot have anything for 36 hours – liquids are permitted after 24 hours but not solid food. Regarding that protocol, she joked on Instagram, “I’m coming up well over 36 hours no food, I was finally able to drink something but I’m just about to like disappear into this bed.” 

She also leaned on messages from home to get through it, sharing a photo of her five-year-old son Adyn flexing his arms with the caption, “Baby boy told me to flex up and be strong, so that I shall.” 

She was scared to go through the procedure alone, but she concluded her initial update with, “Through trials and tribulations, still I rise.”

Townsend has yet to offer a clearer indication of her return date, saying her schedule will depend on her body’s response, but she has pointed to the WTA Finals in November as her goal for coming back to competition. Given that a typical appendectomy recovery runs close to six weeks, she is already missing the WTA 1000 event in Beijing and will miss Wuhan as well. 

Within a week, Townsend’s career-defining Grand Slam trophy was transitioned into an emergency hospital bed. Thanks to her physio, the scare she faced in Guadalajara was not aggravated, and she is already on the path to recovery – a milestone in itself.