Once Ackerman, 39, from New City, N.Y., learned she also carried the BRCA gene, which carries a very high risk of cancer, she decided to have surgery.
"It was a no-brainer," said the mother of three. "I wanted to be around for my kids, hold my grandchildren, stick around for a while."
She underwent a double mastectomy at Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut, followed by a flap reconstruction, where a surgeon used fat and blood vessels from the lower abdomen to rebuild the breasts.
"Why stick your head in the sand?" she asked. "I hope my daughter chooses to get tested when she's 18 so that she can make an informed decision."
Vanessa Silva-Welch, an administrative assistant at Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, got tested for the BRCA gene after her father was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007.
Then a 32-year-old mother of three, she was shocked to learn that not only had she inherited the ticking time bomb, but she was already in the early stages of breast cancer.
"I want to live a long time. I want to watch my kids grow up and see my grandchildren," said Silva-Welch, now 38, who opted for a bilateral mastectomy at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital.
"I didn't want to hear later on down the road that my cancer came back," said the upper West Sider. "I told myself that my breasts do not define who I am as a woman."
It took Silva-Welch a year to fully recover from the surgery and reconstruction, as well as from the chemotherapy she took alongside her dad to eradicate any remaining breast cancer cells.
"I still do have the constant reminder about my scare because the scar is there, but I still feel like I'm living a regular life and nothing's changed," she said. "I'd rather have my breasts gone over having cancer."
"This was absolutely terrifying," said the 55-year-old mom from Westbury, L.I. "But I didn't want to wait to get cancer."
Her mother and grandmother both died from ovarian cancer, and she didn't want her 14-year-old son to suffer the same tragic loss.
"I'm not a betting woman," she said, "and once I learned the odds of me getting cancer were over 50%, I said, I gotta do this."
"The one piece of my body I was never concerned with was my breasts," mourned Stanley. "It took a long time to bounce back, but I'd rather not have breasts than have cancer."
She turned to Adelphi New York's Statewide Breast Cancer Hotline and Support Group to connect with other women who have made the same difficult choice.
"People thought I was a hypochondriac," said Brett, 49, of the upper East Side. "People didn't understand why I would do something so drastic when I didn't have cancer yet."
After losing three aunts to breast cancer at a young age, and watching her sister and six cousins all get diagnosed with the big C, Brett wasn't taking any risks. Once she learned she was BRCA1 positive — like Angelina Jolie — she went under the knife.
"People are very opinionated about it," she said, "but unless you have that mutation, and you know you have an 85% to 87% chance of getting cancer, and you've lost someone close to you, you don't know what it's like."
"I had a 2-year-old son and I wanted to make sure I would be there for him when he's 20," she said. "It's a pretty simple choice when it comes down to it."
Nicki and Ally Durlester say it's no surprise Angelina Jolie chose Dr. Kristi Funk at the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills for her prophylactic mastectomy.
The mother-daughter duo are also patients of Dr. Funk, and both share the same "faulty" BRCA gene that drove Jolie to surgery.
Mom Nicki Durlester tested positive for the gene in 2001, was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer in 2009 and avoided chemotherapy by having both breasts removed.
"Dr. Funk saved my life," the 56-year-old author from Sherman Oaks, Calif., told the Daily News. "She walked in the room and just slayed the doom and gloom. She has an undergraduate degree in psychology, so she really nails what a woman is going though with breast cancer."
Nicki's 26-year-old daughter is now prepping for the same procedure. Both women said Jolie's announcement will help immensely with public perception.
"People think you're crazy to remove body parts. … But if you knew you had an 87% chance of dying in a plane crash, would you get on the plane?" Nicki asked.
Ally said Dr. Funk recommended she get her surgery before she turned 30 because the rule of thumb is that you take the youngest age that one of your close relatives got cancer and then subtract 10 years.
In her op-ed in the New York Times, Jolie hinted that her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer not long after she turned 46. Subtract 10 from that, and it's in the ballpark of Jolie's current age, 37.
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