By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter
An ailing Jonah Lomu and girlfriend Fiona Taylor enjoyed a break at an Auckland cafe this week as the world's best-known rugby player battles the illness that threatens to end his stellar career.
Emerging from Ponsonby Rd's Dizengoff, Lomu smiled but declined to talk about the kidney
illness he has battled for almost eight years.
The couple are in Auckland while Lomu, 27, takes a long break from the Hurricanes and the Super 12 so he can seek treatment for nephrotic syndrome under the guidance of All Black doctor John Mayhew.
There are fears that Lomu, who was catapulted to international fame in the 1995 World Cup after his bullocking runs through England's backline, may not recover sufficiently from the latest flare-up of the illness to turn out to a third cup, in Australia this year.
Dr Mayhew said Lomu's condition had this season worsened to the point where allowing him to play rugby would be negligent.
"Since 1995, when we learned of this condition, we have been walking a tightrope. I'm not confident he will play again. I'm hopeful, but I certainly wouldn't put my house on it."
Lomu, on an enforced one-month break from rugby, cared for himself well, but his condition swung from good to bad and there was no cure. He could only control it.
"The end point could be that he is on dialysis and requires a kidney transplant," Dr Mayhew said.
"That could happen in a month, in a year or never. We just don't know."
Lomu's manager, Phil Kingsley Jones, said yesterday that the player did not wish to be interviewed about his condition.
But in the past Lomu has likened its effect on him to dragging a cardboard carton behind him on the field.
Associate Professor John Collins, head of renal medicine at Auckland Hospital, said perhaps 1000 New Zealanders had nephrotic syndrome in any one year. It could lead to kidney failure in some people while other people got better by themselves.
