Angelina Jolie: I had preventive double mastectomy

[Jazzy]

Angelina Jolie has revealed she recently had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she has a "faulty" gene that gave her an 87 percent risk of developing breast cancer.

The 37-year-old Oscar-winning actress says she decided to go public about her decision to encourage other women to be proactive to see if they are also at risk.

In an op-ed in The New York Times Tuesday, Jolie says the BRCA1 gene "sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer." She says doctors put her hiked ovarian cancer risk at 50 percent.

Jolie, whose mother died from cancer at 56, says she "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."

Full article with video

Big decision and hope she fully recovers. I'm just wondering about the psychological effects from all of this.

 

[Raven]

Gotta do what you gotta do.