Olivia Munn reveals she had a hysterectomy after breast cancer diagnosis
Olivia Munn is opening up about the ongoing fallout from her breast cancer diagnosis, revealing she recently underwent a total hysterectomy.
The "X-Men: Apocalypse" actress said in a new interview with Vogue magazine that her uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries were removed during a surgery in March.
"I did have one real moment of panic. A real breakdown," Munn said of her experience post-hysterectomy, after which a woman no longer has menstrual periods and cannot become pregnant. "Because it's just so strange when you've been with this body your entire life, had your period for so long, feel when you're ovulating, and all of a sudden it's gone."
Munn, the mother of a 2-year-old son, Malcolm, said she made the decision to undergo a hysterectomy after experiencing what she described as "next-level, debilitating exhaustion" as a side effect of the estrogen-suppressing medication she was prescribed to treat her type of cancer, luminal B breast cancer.
Munn said she had the option of staying on the medication indefinitely or going off the medication and undergoing a hysterectomy, and chose the latter option.
"It was a big decision to make, but it was the best decision for me because I needed to be present for my family," Munn said. "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."
Munn and boyfriend John Mulaney welcomed Malcolm in November 2021.
Munn revealed her breast cancer diagnosis publicly in March, sharing in an Instagram post that she was diagnosed with the disease in April 2023. The "Newsroom" actress said at the time she had undergone four surgeries, including a double mastectomy, in the months since her diagnosis.
In her post, Munn credited her doctor with saving her life by calculating her breast cancer risk assessment score.
"Dr. Aliabadi looked at factors like my age, familial breast cancer history, and the fact that I had my first child after the age of 30," Munn wrote. "She discovered my lifetime risk [of breast cancer] was at 37%. Because of that score, I was sent to get an MRI, which led to an ultrasound, when then led to a biopsy. The biopsy showed I had Luminal B cancer in both breasts."
Munn described her cancer as "aggressive" and said without her doctor's help, the cancer may not have been discovered for another year.
In the new interview with Vogue, Munn said she and Mulaney felt like they wanted to continue to grow their family, and so opted to undergo an egg retrieval following her diagnosis.
She said she and Mulaney "started crying" when Munn's doctor told them they had two healthy embryos following the retrieval.
With that news, the next step is to find a surrogate who can carry the pregnancy, according to Munn, who described what the process has felt like for her.
"When you're pregnant with your own baby, it's like teamwork -- you and the baby working together to make their little life come true," she said. "You're doing all this work to eat well, try to not have anxiety, just do all the right things during the pregnancy. With a surrogate, you have to try to go find a version of yourself somewhere out in the world. Somebody that you trust as much as yourself to live their life as a pregnant woman the same way that you would."
Munn continued, "But a surrogate isn't a scary prospect to me anymore because there's nothing I can do. I don't have the ability to carry a baby anymore, so if we want to build our family, this is our option. This journey has made me realize how grateful I am to have options for not only fighting cancer, but also having more children if we want, because I know a lot of people don't have those options."
