Angelina Jolie Reveals How She Went Into Menopause After Doctors Removed Her Ovaries

July 28, 2017 – Angelina Jolie Reveals How She Went Into Menopause After Doctors Removed Her Ovaries

Hollywood screen icon Angelina Jolie is the cover star of Vanity Fair‘s latest issue.

The single mother of 6 reveals how she manages her day-to-day activities and the trauma brought about by her recent separation from Brad Pitt and her latest movie about Cambodia’s genocide.

On how she dealt with the cancer scare, and why she removed her ovaries and breasts as a preventative measure, she said:

Her protectiveness over the kids has become all that more fierce due to her recent brushes with the specter of ovarian cancer; the disease took her mother’s life when she was just 56, as well as those of other family members. In a 2013 New York Times op-ed column, Jolie chronicled her decision to have a preventive double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery after she learned she had the BRCA1 gene.

Two years later, while working in the editing room on By the Sea, she got a call from the doctor saying that he was concerned about certain levels in her blood work that potentially suggested cancer.

“Ten minutes later, the room’s spinning, and you just think, How . . . ?” She kept the news from the kids, did further tests, and waited a few agonizing days. When she finally learned she didn’t have cancer, “I dropped to my knees.” She made an appointment to get her ovaries taken out. “I went into the actual surgery happy as they come. I was skipping. Because at that point it was just preventative.”

She instantly went into menopause.

Last year, in addition to hypertension, Jolie developed Bell’s palsy, a result of damage to facial nerves, causing one side of her face to droop. “Sometimes women in families put themselves last,” she says, “until it manifests itself in their own health.” Jolie credits acupuncture for her full recovery from the condition.

Lately, her skin has become drier, she reports, and she has extra gray hairs. She quips, “I can’t tell if it’s menopause or if it’s just been the year I’ve had.” The idea that she could still be anyone’s idea of a sex symbol is laughable to her. But she says, “I actually feel more of a woman because I feel like I’m being smart about my choices, and I’m putting my family first, and I’m in charge of my life and my health. I think that’s what makes a woman complete.”

On being a mother, actress and humanitarian, Angelina Jolie says

“She knows it sounds a little strange, but Jolie can’t help who she is. “I never woke up and thought, I really want to live a bold life. I just can’t dothe other. It’s the same as I can’t make a casserole. I cannot sit still.” For all her earlier talk about being interested in keeping house, now, as the conversation turns to Africa, she’s champing at the bit, desperate to flee.

“I’ve been trying for nine months to be really good at just being a homemaker and picking up dog poop and cleaning dishes and reading bedtime stories and I’m getting better at all three. But now I need to get my boots on and go hang, take a trip.