When my daughter was born in 1993, the announcement about the discovery of the tumor suppressor gene BRCA2 was a couple years away. And the coining of the word “previvor” was still several years off. Both of those future events would turn out to be profoundly significant.
In 2017, my daughter had genetic testing and learned she had inherited a mutation in one of her BRCA2 genes. A mutation that we now know to have been passed down in her mother’s family for centuries. That’s right, centuries. Knowledge of the mutation has allowed my daughter to take steps to significantly reduce her cancer risk. She is a previvor.
As part of our effort to raise hereditary cancer prevention awareness, I set out to design a previvor shirt for my daughter. But I soon realized that there wasn’t really a symbol for previvorship. So I sat down at my drawing table and sketched out about a dozen designs before settling on this one. I wanted the symbol to be unique and open for personal interpretation. But with no cancer ribbon in the design.
This coming Father’s Day, I will be celebrating my daughter’s previvorship and courage. And I will also be celebrating the science that has given my child a chance to live a full life cancer-free. A life her late mother did not get.
