"I told myself to stay calm."
Angelina Jolie is sharing major medical news. She's just had her ovaries removed.
Jolie writes about her agonizing last two weeks in an op-ed in Tuesday's New York Times. It all started with results of a blood test that detected possible signs of early cancer.
"I told myself to stay calm," she writes. "To be strong, and that I had no reason to think I wouldn't live to see my children grow up and meet my grandchildren. I called my husband in France who was on a plane within hours."
"I passed those five days in a haze, attending my children's soccer game, and working to stay calm and focused," Jolie writes.
INSIDE EDITION spoke to Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News Senior Medical Contributor. Dr. Ashton said, "To remove a woman's ovaries and fallopian tubes is an outpatient procedure done laparoscopically through tiny little incisions. In skilled hands, it can be completed in 15 minutes and usually, that woman will go home from the hospital that day."
The surgery will have a major impact on Angelina's life.
"I am now in menopause. I will not be able to have any more children, and I expect some physical changes," she writes in the Times.
Dr. Ashton said, "When you talk about going through menopause after a woman has her ovaries removed, that's an abrupt, surgical, acute menopause that happens over a period of several hours to days, rather than several months to years. And for some women, it can be very dramatic."
Two years ago, Angelina stunned the world when she announced she had had a double mastectomy after a blood test revealed she carried the BRCA1 gene mutation that gave her an 87% chance of developing breast cancer and a 50% risk of ovarian cancer.
Angelina lost her mother, grandmother and aunt, all to cancer.
At the time, she said further surgery was necessary. Now, it's happened.
And she's optimistic about the future.
"I know my children will never have to say, 'Mom died of ovarian cancer,' " she writes.
