Actress Angelina Jolie has undergone surgery to remove her ovaries
and Fallopian tubes after doctors detected possible signs of cancer
earlier this month.
Jolie, 39, described the surgery in an opinion piece
published in Tuesday's New York Times. She wrote an account of her
preventative double mastectomy for the same publication two years ago.
Jolie writes that she had been planning to have her latest surgery
for several months. Two weeks ago, she got a call from her doctor, who
told her that blood tests had revealed "a number of inflammatory markers
that are elevated, and taken together they could be a sign of early
cancer."
An examination by Jolie's surgeon found nothing concerning, but the
actress says she still had the option of undergoing the procedure and
chose to do so. After the surgery, she learned that she had a small
benign tumor on one ovary, but no signs of cancer.
Jolie underwent the double mastectomy two years ago after a blood
test revealed that she carried a gene mutation that gave her an 87
percent chance of developing breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of
ovarian cancer. At the time, Jolie revealed that she had lost her
mother, grandmother, and aunt to the disease.
"It is not possible to remove all risk, and the fact is I remain
prone to cancer," Jolie writes. She says her most recent surgery was "a
less complex surgery than the mastectomy, but its effects are more
severe."
"Regardless of the hormone replacements I’m taking, I am now in
menopause," Jolie writes near the end of her piece. "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."
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