Angelina Jolie, celebrity mom of six kids, underwent a frightening health issue last year. Today, reports claim that she has wrestled with the side effects of a surgical treatment which has removed her fallopian tubes and ovaries, before she broke up with husband Brad Pitt.
Angelina Jolie is positive for BRCA1, according to Time, which severely increases her risk of having ovarian and breast cancers. She wrote a touching and frank op-ed article in the New York Times, the US Weekly reports. In the article, she explained the upsetting moment a doctor called to inform that her annual blood test for cancer-screening revealed inflammatory indicators that could be a mark of early ovarian cancer.
After hearing the news, the actress decided to immediately see her surgeon and check her ovaries, according to CNN. In March 2015, she opted to undergo a surgery to remove her fallopian tubes and ovaries. Her reason is to cut her risk of having ovarian cancer.
"I went through what I imagine thousands of other women have felt," the A-list celebrity mom wrote in New York Times. She added that she told herself to remain calm, to be strong and that she had no reason to think she would not live to see her kids grow up and to meet her grandchildren.
The decision of the actress to go through the major surgery last year had certainly some serious health consequences, Rebecca Nelken, Ob-Gyn based in Beverly Hills, told the US Weekly. She said that if a woman has ovaries removed during her forties, all of the things that go along with menopause like hot flashes, possible mood swings, insomnia, risk for heart disease and osteoporosis, will hit all at once and sometimes pretty severely.
"I won't be able to have any more kids and I expect some physical changes," Jolie said to the US Weekly. She furthered that despite her condition, she feels at ease with whatever will come, not because she is strong but because this is part of her life and it's nothing to be feared.
