Olivia Munn continues to open up about her cancer journey.
Two months ago, the actress revealed she was diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2023 and underwent a double mastectomy. Olivia later revealed she also got a hysterectomy and ovariectomy — surgeries done to remove her uterus and ovaries — to battle the aggressive cancer.
Related: John Mulaney Is Olivia Munn’s ‘Pillar of Strength’ During Breast Cancer Battle
While the Newsroom alum went through treatment privately for roughly a whole year she made a point of documenting her journey, and the reason is heartbreaking. She said in an interview with Good Morning America on Thursday it was all for her and John Mulaney‘s 2-year-old son Malcolm:
“Cancer is the — that’s the word you don’t want to hear. There’s a lot of other things that you feel like you can beat, but you know cancer takes down a lot of people. And I just thought about my baby.”
When asked by Michael Strahan why she documented her health battle, Olivia explained she wanted to show her baby boy one day that she fought as much as possible in case she didn’t survive:
“Well because if I didn’t make it, I wanted my son when he got older to know that I fought to be here. That I tried my best. You want the people in your life, you want the people that maybe don’t understand what’s going on right to know that you did everything you could to be here.”
Gut-wrenching. And Olivia is doing whatever it takes to beat cancer – no matter how hard treatment is. The Magic Mike star shared that part of her medical plan for luminal B breast cancer was to suppress the hormone production that causes it to grow and was put into medically induced menopause. As a result of the “brutal” hormone suppression therapy, she experienced “debilitating exhaustion” to the point where it prevented her from spending time with Malcolm. Olivia said:
“I was just in bed all day long, all day long, and my quality of life was so minimal and I wasn’t able to be there for my baby. Whenever Malcolm would come into the home he’d run straight to my bed because that’s where he knows I am, like that’s what he associated with me. And that was just too difficult for me to take. I had to find out if there was another option.”
As we mentioned, her other options ended up being a hysterectomy and ovariectomy. Before that though, she did an egg retrieval since she and John wanted to have more children:
“John and I had a long talk about it. We realized that we weren’t done growing our family. That’s a scary process because I have a cancer that feeds off of hormones so I knew there was a risk and our doctor said, ‘Look we’re gonna get one for you and then we’re gonna call it. And then our doctor called and he said, ‘Hey we got the results back. It’s two healthy embryos,’ and I— I mean we just started bawling, crying, both of us.”
She tearfully added:
“We just really hope it works out for us to be able to have another baby. 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.”
Aww…
We really hope things work out for the couple!! Following the two additional surgeries, Olivia still has a long road ahead of her with treatment. Her doctors now plan to start her on another drug to suppress cancer-producing hormones in other parts of her body. However, she candidly said she was reluctant to go through it again because of how exhausting everything has become:
“It’s so tiring. These drugs are so tiring, and I know I’m gonna stay aggressive. I know I’m going to do it. I’m just surprised that I’m even asking for anything less than aggressive because, I mean as you know, it just feels nonstop because it is nonstop.”
That being said, Olivia isn’t giving up! She’s going to fight tooth and nail to come out the other side of this battle — healthy and cancer-free. Even though the journey has been rough for her so far, it’s taught her that she is “a lot braver than I thought I was”:
“And I learned that the most important thing to me in life is my family. 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 that I love and care about are here and healthy and thriving nothing else matters.”
We send Olivia so much love and strength as she goes into this next phase of her treatment. You got this, girl! Watch her entire GMA interview (below):
[Image via Olivia Munn/Instagram, Good Morning America/YouTube]
Related Posts
