Fighting Cancer Before I Have It
As a previvor — someone with a confirmed genetic risk of cancer — I’m hoping for the best but preparing for the worst
“Previvor” is one of those words I’d never heard of until I was suddenly thrust into being one myself. I suppose I have technically been a previvor all my life, but I didn’t know it until a genetic test, fueled by anxiety over my family history of cancer, revealed the truth.
Previvor: A portmanteau of the prefix “pre-” and “survivor”
Previvor: Someone with a genetic risk factor for cancer who has not yet been diagnosed with cancer.
Previvors include a wide swath of people, and you may be one without knowing it. Among the first to really claim the previvor title are the many women (and men) diagnosed with a BRCA mutation. This DNA variation, thanks to celebrity advocates like Angelina Jolie, is known to cause an increased risk of not only breast and ovarian cancer, but also prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer, among others. Though all people can be at risk for these cancers, men remain less likely to get tested for the mutation.
Of course, BRCA is far from the only high-risk cancer gene. In fact, there are a wide variety of Hereditary Cancer Syndromes (HCS):
