Last year, on an entirely different level, I have learned that other than loyalty, one of the greatest efforts to show your love is to stay alive and be healthy for the ones you love and those who loves you.
I learned it after my father died. Not that it was his choice or anything. God has a way of preparing the family, but when we asked him to fight for us. He put up a damn good fight, and that, I will be forever grateful.
That's why, I am incredibly moved by Angelina Jolie's choice of getting a double mastectomy. And I quote the article:
MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. 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.
We often speak of “Mommy’s mommy,” and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer andovarian cancer.
My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.
Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.
Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. 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.
A double mastectomy looked like this:
Of course, she had hers a little bit fancier. But can you imagine being proactive about it?
Read her full article here.
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