By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday January 19, 2023
Chris Evert has announced that she’s cancer free.
The 18-time major champion announced the news one year after she revealed that she had been diagnosed with Stage 1 ovarian cancer.
“Today, I'm cancer-free, and there's a 90 percent chance that the ovarian cancer will never come back,” Evert wrote in an open letter published on ESPN.
Last month the American legend underwent a double mastectomy.
“On Dec. 1, 2022, a year to the day after my hysterectomy, I had a double mastectomy,” she wrote. “I held my breath while I waited for my pathology results. Luckily, the report came back clean and clear, and my risk of developing breast cancer has been reduced by more than 9o percent.”
Evert lost her sister Jeanne to cancer in 2020, and later learned that she should undergo genetic testing due to the BRCA variant of her sister.
“It is only because of the genetic road map my sister left behind and the power of scientific progress that we caught my cancer early enough to do something about it,” she wrote.
Now Evert hopes to spread awareness to help others.
“I have one more surgery left to complete reconstruction,” the 68-year-old said. “They say this part is easy, but I can assure you, the last five years have not been. As relieved as I will be to get to the other side of this, I will always have a heavy heart. I will never heal from losing Jeanne, and I will never take for granted the gift she gave me in the process. My sister's journey saved my life, and I hope by sharing mine, I just might save somebody else's.”