The 39-year-old actress wrote in the New York Times Tuesday about her choice to remove her fallopian tubes and ovaries to reduce her risk of cancer.
Michael Buckner / Getty Images for BFCA
The 39-year-old actress received a call from her doctor two weeks ago, who told her a test result showed markers that could be a sign of ovarian cancer, she wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Tuesday.
"I went through what I imagine thousands of other women have felt," Jolie said. "I told myself to stay calm, to be strong, and that I had no reason to think I wouldn't live to see my children grow up and to meet my grandchildren."
Jolie then called her husband, actor Brad Pitt, who was in France, with the news. He immediately boarded a plane to be with her.
Five days later she underwent a procedure called laparoscopic bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. Doctors found "a small benign tumor on one ovary, but no signs of cancer in any of the tissues," she said.
Jolie is a carrier of the BRCA1 gene, which puts her at a high risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and is related to three women who have died from cancer.
Doctors encouraged Jolie to have preventative surgery "about a decade before the earliest onset of cancer in my female relatives," she said in the Times. "My mother's ovarian cancer was diagnosed when she was 49. I'm 39."
Two years ago, Jolie also wrote in the Times about her double mastectomy in order to reduce her risk of cancer. She planned to have her fallopian tubes and ovaries removed as a follow-up procedure.
Jolie, a mother of six, said she is now in menopause and will also not be able to have any more children. She has adopted three children and given birth to three others, including twins, with Pitt.
"I feel deeply for women for whom this moment comes very early in life, before they have had their children," she said. "Their situation is far harder than mine. 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."
LINK: Angelina Jolie Undergoes Double Mastectomy To Reduce Her Risk Of Breast Cancer
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