“Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.” And so ends Angelina Jolie‘s 5.14 N.Y. Times Op-Ed piece, “My Medical Choice,” in which she reveals she underwent a double mastectomy operation last February. The motive was to guard against a high likelihood that she would one day succumb to breast cancer due to a “faulty” inherited gene called BRCA1.
“I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy,” Jolie explains. “But it is one I am very happy that I made. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.