ANGELINA JOLIE reveals she had a preventative double mastectomy after learning she carried a breast cancer gene.
The Oscar-winning beauty and Brad Pitt partner to Brad Pitt revealed the new in an op-ed piece she wrote for The New York Times entitled, "My Medical Choice."
In the heart wrenching piece, Jolie, 37, writes she completed three months of surgical procedures to remove both breasts that between early February and late April.
She wrote that her thoughts were of her six children after watching her own mother, Marcheline Bertrand die from cancer.
"My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56," Jolie writes
. "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."
She writes that, "They have asked if the same could happen to me."
After genetic testing she learned she carries the "faulty" BRCA1 gene and had an 87 percent chance of getting the disease herself.
She wrote about it with hopes of helping other women.
"I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made," Jolie writes.
Doctors say Angie’s chances of her developing breast cancer have now dropped from 87 percent to less than 5 percent.
