Interesting guest op-ed in the New York Times by Angelina Jolie, who writes about her decision to have a preventive double mastectomy, something my childhood next-door-neighbor did after losing an aunt and a grandmother to the disease, and seeing her own mom battle it for years:
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.
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.Keep reading HERE.
2 comments:
Whoa! This proves why I always liked Angelina - what a brave soul!
I just can't imagine this. Last night I watched Red Without Blue, a movie about twins. One of them gay and the other transgendered. It's hard enough for me to think about sexual reassignment surgery but a voluntary double mastectomy just blows my mind. I really admire her for this and wish her all the best.
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