Jolie's aunt dies of breast cancer
Source: Agencies |
May 28, 2013, Tuesday
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Print Edition
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ANGELINA Jolie's aunt has died of breast cancer less than two weeks after Jolie had a double mastectomy to avoid the disease.
Debbie Martin died at age 61 on Sunday at a hospital in Escondido, California, her husband Ron Martin said.
Debbie Martin was the younger sister of Jolie's mother Marcheline Bertrand whose death from ovarian cancer in 2007 inspired the surgery that Jolie described in a May 14 op-ed in the New York Times.
Debbie Martin had the same defective BRCA1 gene that Jolie does, but didn't know it until after her 2004 cancer diagnosis.
"Had we known, we certainly would have done exactly what Angelina did," Ron Martin said.
Ron Martin said after getting breast cancer, Debbie Martin had her ovaries removed preventively because she was also at very high genetic risk for ovarian cancer, which has killed several women in her family.
The 37-year-old Jolie said in her op-ed that her doctors estimated that she had a 50 percent risk of getting ovarian cancer but an 87 percent risk of breast cancer.
Jolie had her breasts removed first, reducing her likelihood to a mere 5 percent.
The Oscar-winning film star described the three-step surgical process in detail in the op-ed in the New York Times "because I hope that other women can benefit from my experience."
Jolie, 37, wrote that she went through with the operation in part to reassure her six children that she would not die young from cancer, as her own mother did.
"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," wrote Jolie.
"I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a 'faulty' gene."
Debbie Martin died at age 61 on Sunday at a hospital in Escondido, California, her husband Ron Martin said.
Debbie Martin was the younger sister of Jolie's mother Marcheline Bertrand whose death from ovarian cancer in 2007 inspired the surgery that Jolie described in a May 14 op-ed in the New York Times.
Debbie Martin had the same defective BRCA1 gene that Jolie does, but didn't know it until after her 2004 cancer diagnosis.
"Had we known, we certainly would have done exactly what Angelina did," Ron Martin said.
Ron Martin said after getting breast cancer, Debbie Martin had her ovaries removed preventively because she was also at very high genetic risk for ovarian cancer, which has killed several women in her family.
The 37-year-old Jolie said in her op-ed that her doctors estimated that she had a 50 percent risk of getting ovarian cancer but an 87 percent risk of breast cancer.
Jolie had her breasts removed first, reducing her likelihood to a mere 5 percent.
The Oscar-winning film star described the three-step surgical process in detail in the op-ed in the New York Times "because I hope that other women can benefit from my experience."
Jolie, 37, wrote that she went through with the operation in part to reassure her six children that she would not die young from cancer, as her own mother did.
"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," wrote Jolie.
"I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a 'faulty' gene."
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