Chris Evert has emerged victorious — and this time, it was off the tennis court.
The tennis legend has revealed she is “cancer-free” in an op-ed published on ESPN.com Tuesday.
The 18-time Grand Slam winner was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in Nov. 2021 — a diagnosis that echoed the death of her sister Jeanne, who died in Feb. 2020 at age 62.
But because of the “genetic road map my sister left behind,” Evert says doctors were in a position to detect the disease early — meaning that there’s now a 90% likelihood the cancer “won’t ever come back.”
“Jeanne wasn’t BRCA positive, but genetic testing revealed she had a BRCA-1 variant that was of ‘uncertain significance,’” Evert wrote.
“I got a call saying they’d reclassified her BRCA variant — the importance was not uncertain, it was now very clearly pathogenic, and we should always be tested. I used to be shocked, I didn’t even know that was possible.”
Evert revealed she was diagnosed with the identical BRCA-1 variant of the disease that killed her sister.
“It is just due to genetic road map my sister left behind and the ability of scientific progress that we caught my cancer early enough to do something about it,” she wrote, saying the situation would have been way more serious if doctors didn’t find the cancer sooner.
“As a substitute, I used to be diagnosed with Stage 1 ovarian cancer, and I immediately began six rounds of chemotherapy,” she added.
Evert says she “held my breath” while waiting for the pathology results.
“Luckily, the report got here back clean and clear, and my risk of developing breast cancer has been reduced by greater than 90%,” she wrote, adding that she has yet another surgery left to finish.
“As relieved as I will probably be to get to the opposite side of this, I’ll at all times have a heavy heart. I won’t ever heal from losing Jeanne, and I won’t ever take as a right the gift she gave me in the method,” she went on. “My sister’s journey saved my life, and I hope by sharing mine, I just might save someone else’s.”
During her glittering profession on the court, Evert reached No. 1 within the WTA rankings and was inducted into the International Hall of Fame in 1995.
Chris Evert has emerged victorious — and this time, it was off the tennis court.
The tennis legend has revealed she is “cancer-free” in an op-ed published on ESPN.com Tuesday.
The 18-time Grand Slam winner was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in Nov. 2021 — a diagnosis that echoed the death of her sister Jeanne, who died in Feb. 2020 at age 62.
But because of the “genetic road map my sister left behind,” Evert says doctors were in a position to detect the disease early — meaning that there’s now a 90% likelihood the cancer “won’t ever come back.”
“Jeanne wasn’t BRCA positive, but genetic testing revealed she had a BRCA-1 variant that was of ‘uncertain significance,’” Evert wrote.
“I got a call saying they’d reclassified her BRCA variant — the importance was not uncertain, it was now very clearly pathogenic, and we should always be tested. I used to be shocked, I didn’t even know that was possible.”
Evert revealed she was diagnosed with the identical BRCA-1 variant of the disease that killed her sister.
“It is just due to genetic road map my sister left behind and the ability of scientific progress that we caught my cancer early enough to do something about it,” she wrote, saying the situation would have been way more serious if doctors didn’t find the cancer sooner.
“As a substitute, I used to be diagnosed with Stage 1 ovarian cancer, and I immediately began six rounds of chemotherapy,” she added.
Evert says she “held my breath” while waiting for the pathology results.
“Luckily, the report got here back clean and clear, and my risk of developing breast cancer has been reduced by greater than 90%,” she wrote, adding that she has yet another surgery left to finish.
“As relieved as I will probably be to get to the opposite side of this, I’ll at all times have a heavy heart. I won’t ever heal from losing Jeanne, and I won’t ever take as a right the gift she gave me in the method,” she went on. “My sister’s journey saved my life, and I hope by sharing mine, I just might save someone else’s.”
During her glittering profession on the court, Evert reached No. 1 within the WTA rankings and was inducted into the International Hall of Fame in 1995.
