In February Angelina Jolie, who lost her 56 year old mother to a 10 year fight
with breast cancer, began what has to be one of any woman’s most painful journeys
– having a double mastectomy. The process which began in February ended in
April.
A couple of days ago she appeared on the red carpet with husband Brad Pitt at
the London premiere of his movie World War Z. Interviewed by BBC entertainment correspondent Lizo Mzimba, she spoke movingly about how
grateful she was for all the tremendous support she received and that she was
glad to see the discussion about women’s health expanded on.
Brad Pitt seemed
not to mind at all that he wasn’t the centre of attention, and when given the
mic spoke of how this had brought the whole family together.
The operation was a preventative move. Jolie had been told by doctors
that her chances of getting cancer were high in the light of the fact that she had
the gene BRCA1. It meant she had an 87% chance of
getting breast cancer and 50% chance of ovarian cancer.
She decided on the
mastectomy because of the higher risk. The process involved a number of
procedures done over three months, which ended in replacing the cancer-risk
breast tissue with implants. Jolie, who wrote about it in the New York Times,
said that she had been able
to get on with her work fairly soon after each procedure. She said she felt wonderful, and she looked it, but she also looked
very vulnerable. It was a brave decision to make and that she did it will
probably make it a lot easier for other women to do the same.
My grandmother had
a single mastectomy when she was quite young. She didn’t have the benefit of
plastic surgery so I always knew her as having only one breast, but the
operation was a success, even back then and she lived to be 99 years old. May Angelina Jolie and her family have the same good fortune.
