Actress Angelina Jolie has announced she underwent a double mastectomy earlier this year as a precaution, after learning she carries a gene that increases her risk of breast and ovarian cancer.
In a New York Times op-ed published late Monday, the 37-year-old Academy Award winner wrote genetic testing showed her she carries the BRCA1 gene, which increases a woman's chance of developing cancer.
That risk of due to the gene actually varies, but Jolie explained doctors estimated told her had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.
So, Jolie, whose mother died from cancer, decided to have the preventive mastectomy to be "proactive" for the sake of her six children with her partner, actor Brad Pitt.
"My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56," Jolie wrote in the New York Times piece. "She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was."
Jolie said she had kept the process private, but decided to write about her experience with the hope of helping other women.
"I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy," Jolie wrote. "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."
Jolie ended up being anything but private in the details she provided, giving a step-by-step description of the medical procedures. She said between early February and late April she completed three months of surgical procedures to remove both breasts.
"My own process began on Feb. 2 with a procedure known as a 'nipple delay,"' she wrote, "which rules out disease in the breast ducts behind the nipple and draws extra blood flow to the area."
She then described the major surgery two weeks later where her breast tissue was removed, saying it felt "like a scene out of a science-fiction film," She added that nine weeks later, she had a third surgery to "reconstruct the breasts and receive implants."
Jolie briefly addressed the effects of the surgery on the idealized sexuality and iconic womanhood that have fueled her fame.
"I do not feel any less of a woman," she wrote. "I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity."
Jolie also said in the piece that Brad Pitt, her partner of eight years, was at the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Southern California for "every minute of the surgeries."
Jolie, daughter of Hollywood luminary Jon Voight, has appeared in dozens of films including "The Tourist" and "Salt," the "Tomb Raider" films, and 1999's "Girl, Interrupted," which won her an Academy Award.
Jolie has appeared more often in the news in recent years for her relationship with Pitt and her charitable work with refugees through the United Nations.