Olivia Munn revealed her breast cancer diagnosis in March.
Olivia Munn is opening up about her breast reconstruction surgery. The 43-year-old actress appeared on the latest episode of the SHE MD podcast, and discussed coming to terms with her body after undergoing a double mastectomy in the wake of her breast cancer diagnosis.
When Munn returned home after her double mastectomy she got emotional.
"I was by myself in my bathroom, and I looked at them and I cried in a way that I don't think I've ever cried in my life. I cried," she said. "I was devastated. I didn't recognize myself. I didn't know how I would ever dress myself again."
"I thought, 'Oh, there are so many styles, so many things that I'll never be able to wear,'" she continued. "It just looked like someone took off my breasts and then took some tape and paper and stuff and Tupperware, and they're like, 'Here.'"
Munn, who shares Malcolm, 2, with boyfriend John Mulaney, explained that, because she lost so much breast tissue during her double mastectomy, she had to receive "a larger implant just to fill the skin."
"I didn't want to have big breasts. I didn't want them to look like a boob job. [The surgeon] was just very clear, [and told me,] 'It's going to look like that,'" Munn recalled. "All I care about is that I'm alive and I'm here for my baby. But putting that to the side, I'm like, one day people will forget or not know that I had cancer, but they'll look at me and go, 'Oh, what a bad boob job.'"
As she was preparing for the operation, Munn said that she asked the surgeon to go "small and chic" with the implants, and he agreed to go one size smaller in an effort to appease her. The result, Munn said, was "much better" than she thought it'd be.
However, the surgery, along with Munn's lymph node dissection, left the actress with scars, which is "a big reason" she grew her hair out.
"I wanted to be able to hide the scars," she said. "I want to be able to hide the sides of the implant and feel comfortable like that. Maybe one day I'll get more comfortable with it."
When Munn revealed her luminal B breast cancer diagnosis in March, she credited world-renowned OBGYN Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi with saving her life by ordering her to get an MRI based on her Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Score.
Since then, Dr. A's podcast, SHE MD, which she co-hosts with women's advocate and influencer Mary Alice Haney, has partnered with IKONOPEDIA. The software company has allowed them to host the IKONOPEDIA Breast Cancer Risk Calculator powered by International Breast Cancer Intervention Study, which assesses a woman's likelihood of developing breast cancer in the next 10 years and over her lifetime. It is a resource for all women to be their own best health advocate, and calculate their lifetime risk of breast cancer for free.
"You hear everybody say, 'You've got to be your own advocate. You've got to be your own advocate,'" Munn said on the podcast. "You're saying it, everybody says it. But I think what's really difficult about that is when you're not a doctor yourself, you can advocate for yourself as much as you want, and you can go to your doctor and say, 'Do this, do this, do this,' but they have to put in the orders. They've got to do this… so you keep fighting."
Fight she has, in large part for her son, who was the first person she thought of upon hearing her diagnosis. In an interview with Good Morning America, Munn revealed that she even documented her breast cancer treatment for Malcolm.
"If I didn't make it, I wanted my son when he got older to know that I fought to be here," she said. "That I tried my best."
Munn, who's now in medically induced menopause, is hoping to have one more baby after freezing her eggs.
"We just really hope it works out for us to be able to have another baby," Munn said of herself and Mulaney. "We just want one more. I'm not gonna ask for too much more in this life, I promise. I just want one more baby."
Her family, Munn said, is the most important thing in the world to her.
"The most important thing to me in life is my family," she said. "Everything else can go away. I don't have my career, I don't have my body the way that it looked before, but as long as the people I love and care about are here and healthy and thriving, nothing else matters."
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