There’s no question that Angelina Jolie showed TONS of courage when she announced her decision to have preventative, and the more we look at her family’s history with cancer the more it makes sense that she would take such extreme measures.
The actress knew for two reasons that she was at a high risk of being diagnosed with cancer. The first was she had a BRCA1 gene mutation, which greatly increases the chances of getting the disease. The second reason was that it runs in her family.
Angelina’s mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died of ovarian cancer at the age of 56 and we recently found out that her Aunt Debbie was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. But her family’s history with the disease goes even further than that.
Her grandmother, Lois Bertrand, died of cancer at age 45, just a couple of years before Angelina was born. Her great grandmother, Virginia Gouwens, also died of ovarian cancer.
It definitely makes sense that the actress would be more than a bit fearful of the disease herself and would do anything to buck the trend that was happening in her family. As she wrote in her article, her chances of getting cancer have dropped down to 5 percent since her preventative surgery.
We continue to send positive thoughts to Angelina and we also hope her Aunt Debbie is able to pull through as she faces a battle of her own.
Stay strong, ladies!
[Image via Evan Agostini/AP Images.]
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