Last year, iconic actress Olivia Munn wanted to be proactive with her health.
She and her sister got genetic testing that revealed if they were carriers for “90 different cancer genes.” As Olivia Munn revealed in a lengthy Instagram post, she and her sister tested negative for all of the genes, including the BRCA gene.
Around that same time, Munn, who is now 43, underwent her yearly mammogram which also came back normal. But as Munn would come to learn, she wasn’t out of the woods just yet.
“Two months later,” Munn wrote, “I was diagnosed with breast cancer.”
As Munn continued, over a 10 month battle, she underwent “four surgeries, so many days in bed I can’t even count and have learned more about cancer, cancer treatment, and hormones than I ever could have imagined.”
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Emotionally, Munn admits she’s been strong throughout the process only crying “twice,” while adding, “I guess I haven’t felt like there was time to cry. My focus narrowed and I tabled any emotions that I felt would interfere with my ability to stay clearheaded.”
During this journey, Munn said she made it a point to only share herself with the world when she had the energy to do so. “When I can get dressed and get out of the house, when I can take my baby boy to the park,” she continued.
Now, after having time to “catch her breath and getting through some of the hardest parts,” Munn is ready to share her “diagnosis and the worry and the recovery and the pain medicine and the paper gowns.”
Munn admits she never would have known she had breast cancer if it was for her OBGYN, Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi, who made the decision to “calculate my Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Score.
“I wouldn’t have found my cancer for another year – at my next scheduled mammogram,” Munn wrote. “That fact that she did saved my life,” Munn added of her doctor.
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Munn wrote that 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’s “lifetime risk was at 37%.”
As a result of her score, Munn was instructed to get an MRI, an ultrasound, and then a biopsy. “The biopsy showed I had Luminal B cancer in both breasts. Luminal B is an aggressive, fast moving cancer,” she wrote.
“I’m lucky. We caught it with enough time that I had options. I want the same for any woman who might have to face this one day,” Munn wrote.
Munn then encouraged other women to ask their doctors to calculate their Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Score. According to Dr. Aliabadi, “if that number is greater than 20%, you need annual mammograms and breast MRIs starting at the age of 30.”
Munn went on to thank her support system, which included friends, friends of friends, doctors, nurses, and especially her partner and the father of their son, John Mulvaney.
“I’m so thankful to John,” Munn wrote, adding that John was constantly researching and preparing her for what she should expect. She added that he was there before and after every surgery, “always placing framed photos of our little boy Malcolm so it would be the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.”
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