After being diagnosed with breast cancer last year, Olivia Munn revealed she recently underwent a full hysterectomy.
For context, Olivia announced her breast cancer diagnosis in March, sharing on Instagram that she’d had a double mastectomy after an MRI, ultrasound, and subsequent biopsy found that she had “an aggressive, fast moving cancer” in both breasts.
In the Instagram post, Olivia — who’s 43 — said that she's had four surgeries in the past ten months, and now, speaking to Vogue, the actor revealed that she recently had a fifth.
“I have now had an oophorectomy and hysterectomy,” she said in an interview published on Sunday. “I took out my uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries.”
Olivia revealed that the procedure — which was carried out in April — was an alternative to taking an estrogen-suppressing cancer treatment medication that caused her to experience “next-level, debilitating exhaustion.”
“It was a big decision to make, but it was the best decision for me because I needed to be present for my family,” said Olivia, who shares a 2-year-old son, Malcolm, with John Mulaney.
At this point in the interview, Olivia revealed that she and John decided to “try one more round of egg retrievals” shortly after her cancer diagnosis last year, knowing that they weren’t “done growing [their] family” and that the treatment could dramatically impact her fertility.
She said this was the third time she’d frozen her eggs, having done it at age 33, 39, and finally, 42, before her recent hysterectomy.
“It’s interesting because my 33-year-old eggs were great. My 39-year-old eggs? None of them worked,” she said. “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. After my diagnosis, we decided to try one more round of egg retrievals and hoped it was a good month.”
Olivia said she and John were “hoping to make one embryo” from the retrieval that they could use for surrogacy later down the line, and eventually, they were delighted to learn they’d made two.
Looking toward the future, Olivia said using a surrogate for her future babies “isn’t a scary prospect,” adding: “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.”
