Angelina Jolie underwent preventative surgery to have her ovaries and Fallopian tubes removed because of cancer fears, she wrote in a New York Times op-ed.
The procedure, laparoscopic bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, was motivated by a family history of ovarian cancer. A small benign tumor was found on one ovary, but no other signs of cancer were uncovered, she wrote.
Jolie’s mother, grandmother and aunt died from cancer.
“Regardless of the hormone replacements I’m taking, I am now in menopause,” she wrote. “I will not be able to have any more children, and I expect some physical changes. But I feel at ease with whatever will come, not because I am strong but because this is a part of life. It is nothing to be feared.”
Previously, Jolie underwent preventative double mastectomy after a blood test showed a mutation in the BRCA1 gene.
In her op-ed, titled “Diary of a Surgery,” Jolie, 39, stated that tests showed elevated risks for cancer, forcing her to move up the surgery.
“I went through what I imagine thousands of other women have felt. I told myself to stay calm, to be strong, and that I had no reason to think I wouldn’t live to see my children grow up and to meet my grandchildren,” she wrote.
As a result of her surgery, Jolie received a progesterone IUD, which will help maintain hormonal balance – and prevent uterine cancer, she wrote.
Jolie and husband Brad Pitt have three biological children and three adopted children together.