Angelina Jolie story resonates with many Irish women

Several Irish women know how Angelina Jolie felt when she took the option of radical surgery to reduce her breast cancer risk — because they made the same difficult decision, writes Áilín Quinlan

WRITING her memoir Talk to the Headscarf in 2011 left author Emma Hannigan flabbergasted.

“I thought, Holy Cow — did this actually happen to somebody? Yes, it happened to me,” she recalls.

These days she looks forward, never backward and where possible avoids any ruminations about the six horrific years during which she battled cancer an incredible eight times — and won.

“I gave birth twice and I try not to remember that either,” quips the 40-year-old Bray mother of two, who started writing when she became ill, and has just published her seventh book, Perfect Wives.

“It’s not a sad story — it’s a positive story. It’s been hard but I’m still here. But yes as you’d say, it’s been a bit of a pisser.”

It all came back with a bit of a bang for Emma this week when Hollywood A-lister Angelina Jolie sent shockwaves around the world with her pragmatic announcement that she had a double mastectomy after blood tests showed she was carrying a faulty gene which gave her an 87% risk of breast cancer and a 50% risk of ovarian cancer.

It all started for Hannigan in 2005 after the National Centre for Genetic Testing in Crumlin approached her because so many family members had presented with cancer and her mother had tested positive for a mutation in the BRCA gene.

“My grand-aunt had died of ovarian cancer and five family members had had cancer of different kinds over the years. I went to get the test done; it’s just a blood test.”

In April of that year Hannigan discovered that she, too, was carrying the mutated gene.

“I knew this was coming even before I had the test; I’d decided I had the gene so I wasn’t really shocked when they confirmed I had it.”

Dr David Gallagher, consultant medical oncologist and consultant medical geneticist who oversees three clinics at the Mater Private Hospital, the Mater University Hospital and St James explains: “The test is a blood test for two genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 — we all have these genes but what we’re looking for in the test is a mutation in those genes.

“If there’s a mutation in the genes, they cannot do the work they were designed to do, so the gene cannot stop certain cancers — breast, ovarian and prostate.”

Researchers have found that an Irish woman carrying a mutation of BRCA1 has a 65% risk of contracting breast cancer in her lifetime and a 45% risk of contracting ovarian cancer. With BRCA2 the risk of breast cancer is 65% and ovarian cancer is 25%.

“These are the best guess figures for Irish women — the figures in the NY Times came from a study of New York-based Jewish women,” explains Gallagher, who sees about 30 families a week at his three cancer genetics clinics in the Mater Private, St James, and the Mater University Hospital.

The glaring lack of institutional support for such clinics needs to be highlighted, he says.

“There’s a lack of funding for this in Ireland — the only way I could set up these clinics was with the assistance of a charitable organisation such as The Mater Foundation.”

Hannigan believes Angelina Jolie did the right thing in revealing she had had a double mastectomy.

“It’s always good when someone with a very high profile comes out and speaks positively about something. It’s fabulous to see that someone who is as beautiful and high profile as Angelina Jolie can say she did this and it was okay — it’s a great message for women.

“It’s very difficult to stand on the ground without cancer and wonder whether you could bear losing your breasts — it’s like wondering if you would like to lose your head or your hair, or chop your arm off.

“It’s very hard to comprehend when you’re not in that position, but when you are in that position, when you have the gun held to your head, you do what you have to do to survive and that’s what I did and what I presume Angelina did.”