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"Angelina Jolie wrote a totally surprising, truly empowering, and very candid piece for the New York Times that appeared early this morning about the fact that, over the last three months, she&amp;#x27;s been undergoing a series of medical procedures to have both her breasts surgically removed. Angelina&amp;#x27;s mom, Marcheline Bertrand, passed away at the age of 56 after fighting ovarian cancer for a decade. In the piece, Angelina writes about how, while her mom got to hold her first grandchild&amp;amp;#8212;Maddox&amp;amp;#8212;she never got to meet the others. Doctors told Angelina she carries the &amp;quot;faulty&amp;quot; BRCA1 gene, resulting in an 87 percent risk that she&amp;#x27;d develop breast cancer and a 50 percent risk that she&amp;#x27;d get ovarian cancer. Not willing to possibly face the same fate as her mom, Angelina opted to have her breasts removed in a three-step process. She writes: My own process began on Feb. 2 with a procedure known as a &amp;quot;nipple delay,&amp;quot; which rules out disease in the breast ducts behind the nipples and draws extra blood flow to the area. This causes some pain and a lot of bruising, but it increases the chance of saving the nipple. Two weeks later I had the major surgery, where the breast tissue is removed and temporary fillers are put in place. The operation can take eight hours. You wake up with drain tubes and expanders in your breasts. It does feel like a scene out of a science-fiction film. But days after surgery you can be back to a normal life. Nine weeks later, the final surgery is completed with the reconstruction of the breasts with an implant. There have been many advances in this procedure in the last few years, and the results can be beautiful. She also writes that she was able to do this entire procedure with privacy&amp;amp;#8212;which is totally mind-boggling, given how universally famous she and Brad Pitt are!&amp;amp;#8212;and her chance of developing breast cancer has now dropped to just 5 percent. She says her kids notice that she has a few scars, but that &amp;quot;everything else is just Mommy&amp;quot;&amp;amp;#8212;and they&amp;#x27;ll know that she&amp;#x27;ll be with them as long as she can. It&amp;#x27;s a moving piece&amp;amp;#8212;amazing to read something as personal and private as this in a celebrity&amp;#x27;s own words, you know? I lost my mom to cancer one year before she was able to meet her first grandchild, so much of it has struck a chord that&amp;#x27;s resonating through my entire body right now. A major part of Angelina&amp;#x27;s purpose in writing her story was to inspire women who might have histories of breast or ovarian cancer to explore all the options in order to find the one that works for them. She writes: &amp;quot;Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.&amp;quot; Are you shocked? Surprised? Would you ever consider taking the steps Angelina did? More about cancer: * Why are so many women still getting skin cancer? * Women who work in these types of jobs have scary-high breast cancer rates * How to protect your fertility before cancer treatment (and why to care about that now) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/blogs/vitamin-g/2013/05/angelina-jolie-had-a-double-ma>