Just two weeks after she revealed how her family was cursed by the disease, Angelina Jolie's aunt is in a coma dying of cancer.
Debbie Martin, 61, is seen by the actress as an "unsung heroine" behind the scenes of her decision to have a double mastectomy.
Jolie spent Friday waiting anxiously for news after doctors switched off Martin's life-support machine, the Mirror reported.
Husband Ronald, who has been by Debbie's hospital bed since she collapsed at home on Wednesday, told the Sunday People, "she had a seizure and we took her into the hospital."
A source close to the family said that the Hollywood star was very close to her aunt and she did everything she could do to help her.
Martin was very supportive of Jolie's decision to have preventative surgery, the source said.
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Martin knew she had the same potentially lethal gene that prompted her famous niece to have the operation on her breasts.
But she stopped short of that and just had a procedure on her ovaries because the DNA can make the disease strike there too.
Jolie plans to have that second operation before she is 40.