Angelina Jolie has always been adept at taking people's breaths away—but, we admit, she just knocked the wind out of us.
The Oscar-winning mother of six reveals in an op-ed coming out in Tuesday's New York Times that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy in February after doctors told her that she carried the "'faulty' gene" BRCA1 and had roughly an 87 percent risk of contracting breast cancer.
"I am fortunate to have a partner, Brad Pitt, who is so loving and supportive," writes Jolie, 37. "So to anyone who has a wife or girlfriend going through this, know that you are a very important part of the transition. Brad was at the Pink Lotus Breast Center, where I was treated, for every minute of the surgeries. We managed to find moments to laugh together. We knew this was the right thing to do for our family and that it would bring us closer. And it has."
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And, from the sound of it, Jolie's intention was to make more than her immediate family feel comfortable and capable of dealing with such a challenge.
"I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer," she writes. "It is my hope that they, too, will be will able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options."
She admits that the decision was "not easy" but she is "very happy" with it, and her risk of breast cancer has dropped to "under 5 percent."