Angelina Jolie Announces She Has Undergone Preventive Double Mastectomy [View all]

[Tx4obama]

Angelina Jolie Announces She Has Undergone Preventive Double Mastectomy

In an op-ed piece to be published in Tuesday’s New York Times, actress Angelina Jolie has announced that she recently completed a preventive double mastectomy. In the piece, the actress explains that the procedures have decreased her chances of getting breast cancer, from 87% to 5%, and that she feels “empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.”

Jolie says she is sharing her experience now in hopes that other women can benefit from it.

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Full article here: http://www.mediaite.com/online/angelina-jolie-announces-she-has-undergone-preventive-double-mastectomy/

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My Medical Choice
by Angelina Jolie

MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

We often speak of “Mommy’s mommy,” and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.

Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.

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Full OP-ed here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/opinion/my-medical-choice.html?_r=1&