If you remember a couple of years back, actress and director Angelina Jolie Pitt wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about her decision to get a double mastectomy to reduce her risks of cancer. Jolie said, because of a mutation in her BRCA1 gene, she had an 87% chance of breast cancer and a 50% chance of ovarian cancer. She’s also lost her mother, grandmother, and aunt to cancer.
Jolie has now written another op-ed for the paper, this time about her choice to remover her ovaries and get her fallopian tubes tied.
Entitled Diary Of A Surgery, Jolie chronicles her test results and decisions to do this to her body, along with the expected changes and hardships she will face. You can read the full op-ed here, but some highlights are below.
She first details her phone call with her doctor, alerting her of her levels and chances of cancer.
“I got a call from my doctor with blood-test results. “Your CA-125 is normal,” he said. I breathed a sigh of relief. That test measures the amount of the protein CA-125 in the blood, and is used to monitor ovarian cancer…He went on. “There are a number of inflammatory markers that are elevated, and taken together they could be a sign of early cancer.” I took a pause. “CA-125 has a 50 to 75 percent chance of missing ovarian cancer at early stages,” he said. He wanted me to see the surgeon immediately to check my ovaries.
After much more testing, everything came back negative. No tumor, no obvious signs of cancer.
I was full of happiness, although the radioactive tracer meant I couldn’t hug my children. There was still a chance of early stage cancer, but that was minor compared with a full-blown tumor. To my relief, I still had the option of removing my ovaries and fallopian tubes and I chose to do it.
The surgery is now, of course, done, and Jolie feels good about it. She also wants her fellow women and humans to know it’s a tough decision, but sometimes a necessary one.
It is not possible to remove all risk, and the fact is I remain prone to cancer…I feel feminine, and grounded in the choices I am making for myself and my family. I know my children will never have to say, “Mom died of ovarian cancer.”
Regardless of the hormone replacements I’m taking, I am now in menopause. I will not be able to have any more children, and I expect some physical changes.
But I feel at ease with whatever will come, not because I am strong but because this is a part of life. It is nothing to be feared…I inquired and found out that there are options for women to remove their fallopian tubes but keep their ovaries, and so retain the ability to bear children and not go into menopause. I hope they can be aware of that.
It is not easy to make these decisions. But it is possible to take control and tackle head-on any health issue. You can seek advice, learn about the options and make choices that are right for you. Knowledge is power.
For me, one of the more powerful parts of the piece was where she talked about love and importance, with husband Brad Pitt flying to her side.
"I called my husband in France, who was on a plane within hours. The beautiful thing about such moments in life is that there is so much clarity. You know what you live for and what matters. It is polarizing, and it is Peaceful. "
It takes a lot to write something so personal and so powerful, let alone publish it in a widely read resource. Our hats go off to Angelina Jolie Pitt, and hopefully her words are read by the people who need to see what she had to say.
