5 celebrity moms who've had mastectomies
Power couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are parents to six children: Maddox, 12, Pax, 9, Zahara, 7, Shiloh, 6, and 4-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne. Credit: Celebrity Baby Scoop
Mother-of-six Angelina Jolie shocked fans with the news of her recent preventive double mastectomy. After testing positive for a faulty BRCA1 gene, the Academy Award-winning actress put the spotlight on the sensitive procedure that many other women have elected to have.
Angelina is not the first famous woman to open up about this surgery. CelebrityBabyScoop.com took a look at five celebrity moms who have undergone the procedure.
In May 2013, the "Salt" star went public about the procedure in an op-ed piece, writing that she felt "empowered” by her decision. “Life comes with many challenges,” she wrote. “The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.”
“It came on really fast. It was one of those things that I woke up and it felt so right,” she told Oprah Winfrey. “It just seemed like: ‘I don’t want to have to deal with this again. I don’t want to keep putting that stuff in my body. I just want to be done with this.’ And I was just going to let them go.”
She added: “It can be very painful. It’s also a part of you that’s gone, so you go through a grieving process.”
“At the end, to be honest, all it came down to was just choosing to live, and not looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life,” Giuliana told "Today" “In helping other women, you end up helping yourself. You end up being able to validate one of the most painful times in your life by realizing that maybe all the pain and the fear and the tears were worth it.”
“I made my decision because I love life,” Wanda, 47, said of her double mastectomy. “My first thought was, ‘Really? Me, breast cancer?’” Wanda recalls of the day doctors discovered the cancer after her breast reduction surgery. “I just couldn’t believe it. But I knew this was doable.”
“As soon as I found out I had the breast cancer gene, I thought, ‘The odds are not in my favor,’” Sharon told Hello! “I’ve had cancer before, and I didn’t want to live under that cloud. I decided to just take everything off, and had a double mastectomy.”
She added: “For me, it wasn’t a big decision, it was a no-brainer. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life with that shadow hanging over me. I want to be around for a long time and be a grandmother.”
