Olivia Munn reveals she had full hysterectomy amid breast cancer battle: 'It was the best decision for me'
It was the fifth surgery for the "Newsroom" actress, who shares a 2-year-old son with comedian John Mulaney.
Olivia Munn has revealed that she recently underwent a fifth surgery as part of her ongoing battle with breast cancer.
“I have now had an oophorectomy and hysterectomy,” the 43-year-old Newsroom actress said in a Vogue profile published May 12. “I took out my uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries.”
The decision came months after Munn was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer after tests revealed that she had Luminal B — a fast-growing, aggressive cancer — in both of her breasts. After getting the news, Munn recruited a team of doctors, who created an intensive treatment plan that led her to undergo four surgeries over the course of 10 months. She was then prescribed the estrogen-suppressing drug Lupron.
"The side effects of the medication hit me almost immediately,” she said in the new interview. “It was next-level, debilitating exhaustion. I would wake up in the morning and almost immediately need to get back into bed.”
Recounting how the medication impacted her home life with her partner, John Mulaney, and their 2-year-old son, Malcolm, she said, "If you asked Malcolm, 'Where does Daddy work?' he'd run to his [Mulaney’s] desk, and if you asked him, 'Where does Mommy work?' he'd point to my bed. It was so sweet. But at the same time, it was breaking my heart because this is his image of me."
Munn eventually requested an alternative to the drug, which resulted in her most recent surgery.
“It was a big decision to make, but it was the best decision for me because I needed to be present for my family,” she explained. “I had friends try to cheer me up by saying, ‘Malcolm’s not going to remember this. Don't worry.’ But I just kept thinking to myself, ‘I'm going to remember this, that I missed all these things.’ It's his childhood, but it's my motherhood, and I don't want to miss any of these parts if I don't have to.”
The actress also revealed that before the procedure, she froze her eggs for a third time; she'd previously frozen her eggs when she was 33 and 39.
“It’s interesting because my 33-year-old eggs were great. My 39-year-old eggs? None of them worked,” she told Vogue. “As you get older, one month can have great eggs, the other not so much. Clearly, the month we did at 39 was not a good month.”
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She continued, “After my diagnosis, we decided to try one more round of egg retrievals and hoped it was a good month. John and I talked about it a lot and we don’t feel like we’re done growing our family, but didn’t know if I would have to do chemotherapy or radiation.”
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While the couple hoped to get even one healthy embryo, they later learned that they were able to make two.
“John and I just started crying,” Munn recalled. “It was just so exciting because not only did we get it in one retrieval, but it also meant that I didn't have to keep putting myself at risk. It was just amazing.”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.