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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to not know how to feel about Angelina Jolie's announcement?

83 replies

Scarletohello · 14/05/2013 23:58

I must admit I was really shocked to hear that she had had a double mastectomy,I don't know much about breast cancer so it seemed an extreme thing to do. Very brave to go public about it but I felt disturbed and sad,feels brutal to me. Can't really process it tbh,what do other people think..?

OP posts:

DonDrapersAltrEgoBigglesDraper · 15/05/2013 07:54

I hear you C&T, but it's not her fault she's taken steps to protect herself and her family and is - arguably - being touted as a hero.

What was she meant to do? Not do it, because others weren't able to?

ubik · 15/05/2013 07:56

Why do you have to deal with it at all? You don't know her.

Sirzy · 15/05/2013 07:57

But clouds and trees it isn't taking away from those who have suffered it are battling cancer but her coming out and taking about it hopefully means that other lives can be saved. To talk about and in a way 'normalise' take such extreme preventative treatment is a good think and I think she is brave for taking such a decision and for sharing it with the public to raise awareness

VitoCorleone · 15/05/2013 07:58

What do i think? Nothing, i dont know her, she had an operation, loads of people have operations, if i had to sit and process them all id never get anything done.

Tee2072 · 15/05/2013 07:58

Yes, because if everyone can't have it, no one should have.

Your logic makes me .

Her actions do not, in any way, lessen the fight others are going through. What we have here is nothing but sour grapes.

You know that breakfast you just ate? You shouldn't have eaten because others have no food.

Oh wait...

Ledkr · 15/05/2013 07:58

clouds that annoys me too.
Lots of us ordinary women have it done without hero worship.
I was 27 had three kids a self employed dh no feckkng help and was back at work two months later.
It must be easier if you've got money.
Still glad I had it done though.
I can't see why anyone would think it was anything but brave.
I'm seeing drs next week for further gene testing with a view to taking out my ovarys now I'm older.
altinkum it doesn't effect your cervix at all.

LurkingBeagle · 15/05/2013 07:59

I have had genetic testing on the NHS, not for the BRCA genes but for HNPCC/Lynch syndrome. It takes forever and it's actually extremely difficult to get referred, but I am very grateful having found out the comparative cost in the US.

HNPCC is like BRCA but involves different organs - my risk of colon and womb cancer is 80-odd% (already had colon cancer at 31) and ovarian cancer is about 60% lifetime risk. I am contemplating having a hysterectomy to remove the risk but oopherectomy is too drastic. I will continue with annual ovary screening and blood tests. I have to say, AJ has made me give it serious thought rather than filing it under "too difficult" and ignoring it (which is what I normally do!)

fanjoforthemammaries7850 · 15/05/2013 08:00

She had an 87% risk of breast cancer. .of the aggressive kind.

Her actions seem brave not extreme to me.

fanjoforthemammaries7850 · 15/05/2013 08:03

Also..what Tee said

Smudging · 15/05/2013 08:04

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

EhricLovesTeamQhuay · 15/05/2013 08:06

I don't know why anyone has to have much of an opinion on this.

NotTreadingGrapes · 15/05/2013 08:08

She can never win though, can she?

She would have been lambasted for having it done quietly, and in private and not saying anything, because then she "could have saved lives and made other women realise it's an option". Now she's being lambasted for having the sense (and is it really brave opting to live rather than very probably not? Or just common bloody sense?)

It's made me re-evaluate her tbh. Thought she was a bit of a dipstick before.

Did Nigella do the same? I know there is a large incidence of aggressive breast cancer in her family as well.

valiumredhead · 15/05/2013 08:09

I think brutal is an ok way to describe having your breasts removed.

When I think about it, it seems brutal to me.

BUT also very necessary in her case.

Ledkr · 15/05/2013 08:11

smudging I didn't find it brutal at all. They reconstruct you beautifully and you get a psychology assessment first.
For me it was the end if constant worry and the beginning of a more fulfilling life.

hackmum · 15/05/2013 08:13

I'm with you, OP. It's a brutal op. (My DM had a radical mastectomy in the days before they realised they were unnecessary, and it was pretty horrible.) It is a very extreme preventive measure. Obviously her risk of getting breast cancer is very high - but we also know that survival rates for breast cancer are much higher now than they used to be. So an alternative for her would have been to have regular screening (though there are obviously risks with that as well).

This isn't to judge Jolie by the way - I'm sure she did what she thought was right and I might well do the same in her situation. I suppose I'm slightly uncomfortable about the way this is being presented in the media. Stories to do with cancer are often presented in terms of people being "brave", but I don't think the question of bravery is the important thing here. It seems to me that she made what she felt was a rational choice based on evidence.

I'm not sure either that the idea of raising "awareness" is a useful one. Very few women who suffer from breast cancer have the defective gene. So being tested for the gene isn't the answer for most women, and even if you do get tested, they can't guarantee that the test will identify the defective gene. So it's more complicated than the way it's being reported in the media - as is so often the case.

lljkk · 15/05/2013 08:14

I think it's a good thing she talked about it publicly, raising the profile publicly, not least so that women who decide they have to make the same difficult decision feel more confident about it. There have been several stories about non-famous women making the same choice in the current affairs media, btw. It's a familiar story to me.

BUT, I regret we live in a celebrity obsessed culture where it takes a Sleb to make people accept this as a legit choice and something that can be talked about openly. Or maybe I just don't like JA, not sure which!

lljkk · 15/05/2013 08:16

I think more radical would be a woman who had breasts removed but then didn't have reconstruction. Who said, well, implants post their own risks & are a faff and I don't need them, flat-chested will do me fine. If someone wanted to be genuinely brave in their choices.

(Friend did this, btw)

lljkk · 15/05/2013 08:17

And then again, women who have the gene but decide not to have the surgery, will they be criticised for not being radical enough? What happened to personal assessment of risk, I'm afraid that JA's public choice will make it harder for women who have the same problem but decide to handle it differently. That choice needs to be respected, too.

TolliverGroat · 15/05/2013 08:18

Altinkum, she specifically said that she was planning to have her ovaries removed but ?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,? she wrote.

Do you really not "get" why she didn't have both sets of prophylactic surgery in one three-month period?

NotTreadingGrapes · 15/05/2013 08:18

I reckon a lot of the pearl clutching (and not just on here, it was headline news on Italian tv last night and the reporter was clearly utterly gobsmacked and treated it almost as a publicity stunt) is to do with it being the breasts of a beautiful and (relatively) young woman.

No-one would be talking about it had she had a hysterectomy, or any other -ectomy to reduce her risk of dying from a horrid horrid disease that she knew she had a high chance of developing.

TolliverGroat · 15/05/2013 08:23

(or at least that she was strongly considering the oophrectomy)

valiumredhead · 15/05/2013 08:24

Not in my case, I 'clutched my pearls' over a friend's mastectomy and another's hysterectomy.

Ledkr · 15/05/2013 08:26

hackmum mastectomy for breast ca is sometimes still necessary my friend has just had to have one.
Also It's not as simple as just opting to get cancer instead because survival rates are higher. The treatment can be horrible and life changing for many and there's still too many women dying from it.
The screening is not always the best and for ovarian cancer it's next to useless.
I'd have had a very different twenty years had I not had mine.

Tee2072 · 15/05/2013 08:43

At least no one here is saying what some are saying which is "poor Brad".

I was I wasn't being serious.

NotTreadingGrapes · 15/05/2013 08:46

Jeez.

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