Star says she found out she had the “cancer gene,” wanted to be as safe as possible

Nov 5, 2012 14:15 GMT  ·  By
Sharon Osbourne says she’s opted for a double mastectomy after being told she has the “breast cancer gene”
   Sharon Osbourne says she’s opted for a double mastectomy after being told she has the “breast cancer gene”

Sharon Osbourne has gone under the knife again but, this time, it was for purely medical and not aesthetic reasons. Having been told she had the “breast cancer gene,” she decided to be as safe as possible.

Consequently, she’s opted for a double mastectomy, she confirms in a new interview cited by the Daily Mail.

“As soon as I found out I had the breast cancer gene, I thought: ‘The odds are not in my favor.’ I’ve had cancer before and I didn’t want to live under that cloud: I decided to just take everything off, and had a double mastectomy,” the television personality says.

She explains that living with the fear that she would get breast cancer and then having to battle it would have been too much for her, considerably more than going under the knife for the 13-hour procedure.

Sharon doesn’t say whether she’s had the surgery already, but she insists that she wants no one’s pity, because she believes there’s nothing about the whole situation that would make anyone feel sorry for her.

Moreover, Mrs. Osbourne describes the decision of getting a double mastectomy as a “no-brainer.”

“For me, it wasn’t a big decision, it was a no-brainer. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life with that shadow hanging over me. I want to be around for a long time and be a grandmother to Pearl,” Sharon says.

“I didn’t even think of my breasts in a nostalgic way, I just wanted to be able to live my life without that fear all the time. It’s not ‘pity me,’ it’s a decision I made that’s got rid of this weight that I was carrying around,” she adds.

She’s not the only celebrity to talk about getting a double mastectomy so candidly: Christina Applegate also went under the knife a few years ago and, though she never said she regretted the decision, she did note once that she missed her “exquisite breasts.”