A family health history has details about health problems your blood relatives have had during their lifetimes. Your personal health history has details about any health problems you’ve ever had. Your medical history includes both your personal health history and your family health history. I hope that this will be helpful to other women.When you fill out forms at your doctor’s office, do you wonder why it matters whether or not your grandmother had high blood pressure or diabetes? Your doctor also asks you questions like this. My own regimen will be posted in due course on the Web site of the Pink Lotus Breast Center. I acknowledge that there are many wonderful holistic doctors working on alternatives to surgery. I want to encourage every woman, especially if you have a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, to seek out the information and medical experts who can help you through this aspect of your life, and to make your own informed choices. And it has.įor any woman reading this, I hope it helps you to know you have options. We knew this was the right thing to do for our family and that it would bring us closer. We managed to find moments to laugh together. Brad was at the Pink Lotus Breast Center, where I was treated, for every minute of the surgeries. So to anyone who has a wife or girlfriend going through this, know that you are a very important part of the transition. I am fortunate to have a partner, Brad Pitt, who is so loving and supportive. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity. On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman. And they know that I love them and will do anything to be with them as long as I can. Everything else is just Mommy, the same as she always was. They can see my small scars and that’s it. It is reassuring that they see nothing that makes them uncomfortable. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer. My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. But it is one I am very happy that I made. I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. There have been many advances in this procedure in the last few years, and the results can be beautiful. Nine weeks later, the final surgery is completed with the reconstruction of the breasts with an implant. This causes some pain and a lot of bruising, but it increases the chance of saving the nipple. 2 with a procedure known as a “nipple delay,” which rules out disease in the breast ducts behind the nipple and draws extra blood flow to the area. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action. Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness.
During that time I have been able to keep this private and to carry on with my work.īut I am writing about it now because I hope that other women can benefit from my experience. On April 27, I finished the three months of medical procedures that the mastectomies involved. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could.
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