I’m sure that will make for a nice change.
There’s a lot more to the ovaries in terms of hormones, and if you’re at risk of breast cancer, you can’t (shouldn’t) take HRT. She’s probably on ovulation preventing meds, like the pill, until she’s in her 40s, and will then have the ovaries removed.
She’s 37, which is pretty close to 40, and complete removal of ovaries in such high risk cases is also done. She’s just probably spacing out all the surgeries to give herself a chance to heal well between them, and also possibly to accommodate her work schedule.
She is having her ovaries removed as soon as she can. BRCA1, the gene mutation she has, gives her an increased risk of Ovarian Cancer as well as Breast Cancer. My fiance has the same gene mutation and had one ovary removed during her battle with breast cancer. She wants to have children but is constantly urged by her doctors to remove them as soon as she can. That’s why I was surprised at first when she only mentioned the mastectomy and nothing about removing her ovaries.
Good idea. My mother had one ovary removed in her late 20s. Not only did she end up pregnant again (with me!) after her doctors told her it was pretty unlikely, but, 50 years later, that one last ovary became cancerous.
Athena, can I ask what the results were of your mother’s tests?
Here’s praying for good news for you and her.
Regards,
Shodan
I think she’s in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” position on that. If she didn’t say anything, everyone would be all, “Use your celebrity to raise awareness, you selfish beast!” and if she does say something, everyone is all, “She’s using her celebrity for self-serving publicity!”
Two quotes from Angelina’s editorial that some people may have missed:
I understood this to mean that she would eventually be having the ovaries removed as well.
She seems to be acknowledging that she is lucky to have the resources to afford the testing and treatment, and that more needs to be done to ensure its availability.
I admire her courage (and yes, I do think it takes tremendous courage to voluntarily undergo this type of extensive surgery) and her willingness to go public. How many people in this thread alone had never heard of the BRCA gene before she decided to tell her story?
Agreed. Or they’d say that she was hiding it and making double mastectomies seem shameful.
I think she handled it well. And I hope it does make other women feel like getting a double mastectomy isn’t something they have to hide or feel ashamed/unfeminine/etc about. I don’t personally know anyone who’s had to get one, but I can imagine that it could be pretty devastating. Right or wrong, we associate having breasts with being female. And to me, the reconstructive surgery would feel different than if I’d just gotten implants, because those add to the breasts you have, they don’t require that all of your natural breast tissue be removed. Having a famous celebrity known for her beauty and sexual attractiveness publicly get one is pretty powerful.
Thanks for asking & the prayers. Not good news - it’s back. Luckily her gyno caught it early - she could FEEL it, how crazy, huh?
The good news is that so far, she doesn’t have any symptoms, and she responded well to the basic first-level chemo therapy they did last time. So we’re thinking that we’ll check again in a month, and if she’s still feeling good, go another month, then probably start chemo.
At this point, we pretty much treat it as a chronic disease. Hopefully she’ll continue to respond to chemo every couple of years and we take it from there.
But it does make me think even more about getting all the girly parts removed. I think anyone who thinks that Jolie is an attention whore or using this as a publicity scheme is missing the point. I’m very happy that she stepped forward and publicized it.
I suspect that lots of people don’t remember that 50 years ago breast cancer was a deep, dark secret. Then Betty Rollins wrote a book about her experience with it, which raised awareness tremendously.
Jolie seems to have been able to keep this a secret - and went public to also raise awareness. Getting the procedure was for her - talking about it was for everyone.
Was the procedure self serving? Only if any surgery is. It seems at least some of her reasoning was to ensure that she’d be around to see her children grow, unlike her mother.
This is why I don’t understand the “self-serving” criticism. People say, “Oh, she did it for the attention. Who else is benefiting from this?” Er, maybe her partner and children, who would no doubt prefer that she didn’t go through an awful health ordeal and possibly die?
But I guess they don’t benefit from her being alive and healthy, or something. Ergo, self-serving. :rolleyes:
More evidence of who benefits from her going public: an article in USA Today about the huge increase in calls to various cancer centers after her editorial appeared.
Women who had been advised to seek genetic counseling suddenly deciding to do it because Angelina publicly discussed her situation.
How is it possible to have a 5% chance of getting breast cancer after the breasts are removed?
Can implants of the type AJ got get in the way of screening?
If she does get breast cancer after breast removal, what kinds of treatment options are still available ( I mean, obviously she can’t have another mastectomy)… Would she have to undergo painful extraction of her implants? I can’t imagine having to go through that kind of pain.
I think the 5% is in the lymph glands that may have not been removed. I do not know if the implants get in the way of screening, or if they would have to be removed.
The point is for her to tell people that it’s okay, just like a homosexual star who comes out of the closet. If she can do it and still be thought of as sexy (or just a complete woman), that deals with a lot of the fears many women have.
And, my grandmother had breast cancer, and I will now be pushing my mom to check this sort of thing out if we can. Neither she nor I knew anything about this gene. So it may even help us, just through plain awareness.
I will say that, in my opinion, Breast Cancer Awareness in general is not nearly as useful as this. We’re so used to the pink ribbon that we tend to tune out now.
There may still be a small amount of breast tissue left behind in the axillary area. Also, the surgery apparently spared her nipples (for aesthetic reasons) and those can develop breast cancer as well.
Excision of the tumor, chemotherapy, radiation therapy. Whether the implants would have to be removed would depend on exactly where the tumor formed.
My paternal grandmother’s mother died from ovarian cancer at the age of 48. She gave birth to 10 children, two daughters (one being my grandmother) and eight sons.
My grandmother had breast cancer and required a double ‘radical’ mastectomy at the age of 44. She died at 86 from ovarian cancer that spread throughout her lower abdomen.
Her oncologist strongly urged her and her surviving siblings be tested for a BRCA mutation. Thankfully, my grandmother didn’t have the mutation. But her sister (who has also had breast cancer) did have the BRCA1 mutation. Her daughter, at the age of 49, was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer and barely survived with a double ‘modified-radical’ mastectomy.
My grandmother’s younger brother also had the BRCA1 mutation. He had prostate cancer before age 50. One of his daughters has the mutation and the other one doesn’t. The one who has it was also diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 42!
I’m still trying to contact all the children of the siblings who died before her.
And now Angelina Jolie’s aunt has died of breast cancer. No doubt her aunt’s cancer influenced her decision.
Maybe it is misogynistic, but on some level I am hoping that Angelina Jolie does a topless scene after her reconstruction. Because that may help even more than what she is doing now. Much of what keeps women from being screened, or going to the doctor when they find a lump, is the fear of becoming unattractive. If Ms. Jolie can show that this is not necessarily going to happen, maybe that can help as well.
Not that she is under any obligation to cater to my prurient interests, or those of anyone else.
Regards,
Shodan