Because today is apparently the one day of the year where all the saddest celebrity news happens, actress Angelina Jolie opened up about her recent double mastectomy in an op ed piece she penned for the New York Times, which she underwent to pre-emptively fight off breast 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. Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex. READ ANGELINA’S FULL OP ED »
Well good for her for doing the smart thing and taking care of an unfortunate situation before it got any worse than it could have. And good for her for being so candid about it, in the hopes that other women would see this and get more proactive about their health.