[00:00:00] Adam Walker: From Susan G Komen, this is Real Pink, a podcast exploring real stories, struggles, and triumphs related to breast cancer. We’re taking the conversation from the doctor’s office to your living room.
[00:00:17] Today we’re joined by someone very special to kick off our latest Breast Cancer Awareness Month episode. Susan G. Komen’s President and CEO Paula Schneider is here to introduce today’s guest. Paula, over to you.
[00:00:29] Paula Schneider: Thank you, Adam, and I wanted to personally welcome our guest today. We’re delighted to have actress, activist, and mom, Olivia Munn, and she’s here today with her brand new little baby girl and her adorable son.
[00:00:42] And I know how important this is to her earlier this year. Olivia bravely shared her breast cancer diagnosis and urging women to advocate for early detection through the breast cancer risk assessment tool and her heartfelt story resonated globally, prompting a huge surge in awareness and proactive health measures among women.
[00:01:00] And you know, we’re all part of this village. So thank you so much for what you’ve done. And Olivia, welcome to the show. We’re honored to have you. And we’re so thrilled to partner with you and with SKIMS, the amazing iconic brand on this important campaign to inspire women to prioritize their health and make sure that they get early screenings.
[00:01:19] Early screenings are key ladies, for those of you that would have not gone and got your regular screenings, put your big girl panties on and get out there and go because it is so important. And Olivia, you and I have a lot of things in common. Actually, we’re both survivors with two, two children. I have two daughters.
[00:01:38] And congratulations on your new precious little daughter. She sounds and looks so cute. And both of us have a passion towards eradicating breast cancer. So when you shared your story earlier this year, I don’t know if you know this or not, but Komen. org saw a 500 percent increase in visits to our risk assessment tool.
[00:01:59] So by you coming out and the courage that you had, it’s truly helping save other lives. And I know that Adam is excited to talk to you today. So I’m going to pass this on to him, but I just want to thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For your support. Support. And we’re so grateful that you’re here.
[00:02:15] Olivia Munn: Thank you so much.
[00:02:16] That was all very emotional and very kind of you to say. And and no, I had no idea that there was that surge. I do know the impact it had around the world and that was incredibly healing for me. Because there was a lot of fear and coming out and anxiety and really being unsure. So when I did see that impact and the ripple effect around the world and globally, it was really healing.
[00:02:51] But I had no idea about the percentage that you’re talking about. And that’s made me just feel
[00:02:56] Paula Schneider: Amazing. Yeah, just did something really great because so many more people will use that tool now and they’ll have the ability to see what their family health history is and not all breast cancers. In fact, most breast cancers are not due to a family health history, but you know, you got to be on health advocate.
[00:03:12] If you feel anything, make sure you go to the doctor and make sure that you are very responsive to what you talk about. If someone tries to say to you or your doctor, well, let’s just watch it for another year or so. Make sure you don’t. Mhm. You know, because this is important, Adam,
[00:03:29] Adam Walker: Olivia, so excited to have you on the show today.
[00:03:32] It’s so nice to meet you. Thank you for joining us.
[00:03:34] Olivia Munn: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:03:36] Adam Walker: So, Olivia, I know that you’ve just shot a campaign with SKIMS and it’s related to Brant’s cancer and kind of showcasing your experience. Can you tell us a little bit more about that photo shoot and that campaign?
[00:03:48] Olivia Munn: Yeah SKIMS came to me with the Susan G Komen Foundation and said that they would love to do a breast cancer campaign and I was so moved and excited because SKIMS is such an iconic brand and when people think of SKIMS, they think of beauty and sexiness and With breast cancer, I think that it’s not always the first things that people think about maybe like not even in the top hundred, but I really look at breast cancer as as a battle and as a war and as anyone who’s gone through it, as women who have, you know, played the dragons and have fought the dragons and and I was just so excited about the synergy between the two and and while we were doing the shoot, first of all, the most incredible team, the most incredible team at SKIMS.
[00:04:59] I mean, I the thought that went through my mind so much was like, this is why they’re successful. This is why they’re successful. It was a team of amazing women, all women. It was fantastic. They were so fine. and thoughtful and considerate and collaborative. I could have stayed there all day long.
[00:05:22] And I just felt so taken care of. And when we were picking out the outfits, you know, a few days before, I had made a few requests to, to cover up my scars. I wanted to only wear certain pieces that wouldn’t show certain scars. And they were very understanding of that and didn’t hesitate and just switch things out for me.
[00:05:53] And after my first shot with this one black bodysuit, we were changing and we were touching up my scars with my makeup artist. And then it just kind of. hit me after she touched up one scar that I really, you know, think is kind of placed in in a way that I don’t really haven’t really learned to love yet.
[00:06:22] But I was looking at my mastectomy scars and I was thinking about the first time I saw them and how shocking it was for me. And I thought, you know what? I do look at these scars as proof of how hard I fought. And I think I want to not only embrace the scars right now but show other women who have these same scars that there’s nothing to feel bad about.
[00:07:02] There’s nothing to feel ashamed about. And that we really can love them, like truly love them and feel pride in them. And so I had gone to the SKIMS team and I said, what do you guys think about me showing my scars? And gosh, they were so amazing. They were like, they’re like this would be amazing if that’s what, if that’s what you feel comfortable doing.
[00:07:29] And I said, yes, let’s do it. And because they were all women there, I felt so comfortable and taken care of. And, you know, even if they hadn’t gone through adult mastectomy themselves, they all understood what that must feel like. And and so, We did the shots and and I’m really proud of them. I am proud of myself for pushing past that fear and I really hope that other women see them billboards and online and magazines and feel really beautiful knowing that they have the same scars that that I have and that I’m embracing them.
[00:08:20] Adam Walker: I love that. That’s beautiful. That’s a beautiful thing. Thank you for doing that.
[00:08:24] Olivia Munn: There’s a lot of people who need help and then and need tests and scannings and people to be really You know proactive for them But there are only so many MRI machines so many PET scan machines so many radiologists so there does become this clog in the system that makes it harder for us to get in there, but I think The number one thing is what paula just said which is Doctors will often tell you to just wait, see where it goes, make sure that, you know, it’s something really serious before you go down all the testing road and and that can be the difference between life and death at some point.
[00:09:18] And you know, you don’t know how close something is to a lymph node. And once it’s in a lymph node, that’s the highway to the rest of your body. Okay. Thank you. and it’s an autobahn. It can go as fast as it wants to go. And that’s incredibly terrifying. And so, you know, with mine, I was stage one, but I had it all over both breasts and in multiple quadrants.
[00:09:44] And it was, you know, it’s rare to have it in multiple quadrants and even more rare to have it. bilateral. And if I had just waited, who knows how far it would have spread because mine is an aggressive cancer. And you don’t know what kind of cancer it is until you get in there and do a biopsy. So, so for anyone to be told, just wait it out, I think it’s incredibly irresponsible.
[00:10:12] Adam Walker: Yeah, I mean, you’ve said you’ve verbalized what a lot of people have said on the show, which is that you are your own best advocate. And if something’s not right advocate for yourself, right? And that’s, I think that’s what you’re talking about. And I really appreciate you sharing that. Now I’m curious though if we could back up for you to just share your breast cancer story with us.
[00:10:31] Like, from like, like how are you diagnosed? Like walk us through it.
[00:10:35] Olivia Munn: So I going back to, you know, I had to say it’s everybody listening to this who has gone through breast cancer. I was just talking with two friends. Jenna Fisher, who just came out with her breast cancer diagnosis, and we have been talking a lot about it leading up to her coming out publicly about it and Clea Shearer, who is the founder and owner of the home at it.
[00:11:02] And she also came out with her breast cancer diagnosis a couple years ago. But we were, I was talking to Jenna about her first interview and she was trying to prepare for it. And she’s like, it’s so hard because She’s like, when they asked me about my breast cancer journey, she’s like, okay, so in 1999, I’m like, I know, it’s like, we have all these numbers, you know, when you have breast cancer, the, there are dates that are very important.
[00:11:30] And there are a lot of dates and there were a lot of tests and a lot of numbers. So I just want to preface that. I was. I was 41 years old in 2022 and I got my first mammograms and I had dense breasts. So I had to do a follow up mammogram and they were clear. And I also got an ultrasound in 2021 while I was pregnant because it was the safest thing to do while being pregnant.
[00:11:55] I had just begun working with Dr. Aliabadi as my OBGYN and I only met her when I became pregnant. That’s it. So a lot of the tests and stuff like that couldn’t be done, but she did do the ultrasound that was clear gave me a lot of peace of mind. And after my clear mammograms, you know, more peace of mind.
[00:12:15] And then I went in in early 2023 for my follow up yearly mammogram. And that was clear as well. And then I decided to get a genetic test done. I, you know, had a new baby. I just wanted to be really proactive. And I’d heard about BRCA, and I just wanted to get checked for BRCA. And I got checked for 91 other cancer genes.
[00:12:42] So then that was clear as well. So while I’m in for my yearly pap smear with Dr. Alibadi, she And I was talking about my genetic testing being a 0 percent chance of getting any genetic cancer. So I was celebrating and being like, This is great. I have all these, you know, I’m passing every test and this is exciting.
[00:13:04] And she said, Well, let me take this. breast cancer lifetime risk assessment test for you. It’s free. It’s online. It takes a couple minutes. Let me just do it really quick. And she asked me some questions and then I I found out at that point that my risk was 37. 3 percent of having breast cancer in my lifetime.
[00:13:25] Anything above 20 percent is considered high risk. So I was, almost double the percentage of high risk. So she said, I want you to get an MRI. I thought nothing of it. I’d been passing every test. I was happy to get more testing done just to keep clearing and keep passing tests. So I go to get the MRI.
[00:13:48] And I remember when I went to get the MRI, I remember the tech who was there, the nurse I met afterwards and the doctor, you know, how they all ask you the same questions. Every person you meet, they all said, why are you getting this? MRI you’re too young to be testing for an, you know, with an MRI for breast cancer.
[00:14:07] Did you, and then they all asked, did you test positive for BRCA? And I, You know, looking back, I, I did not know that there were more breast cancer genes besides BRCA. I didn’t know. I thought that BRCA was the one and Angelina Jolie did an amazing job launching that into the, you know, into the stratosphere.
[00:14:31] So we all know, and it has saved so many lives, but for me, I thought that was the only one. And I thought, as long as you clear that, you’re good. And I was getting my MRI and the radiologist called me later that day and said, we found something and you need to get an ultrasound, you know, in life, in doctors, women, sometimes they see things like with my first mammogram, it was like, Hey, I need you to come back in.
[00:15:03] We just want to make sure I felt no fear, I felt no concern, but there was something about this. that instantly gave me a little bit of a panic. And I called some girlfriends and I was like, have you ever had anything like this? And I had girlfriends say, yeah, but it’s nothing. Let them do the biopsy.
[00:15:23] And it’ll, I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s probably a clogged milk duct. It could just be a hormonal, you know benign cyst. It could be a water filled cyst. It could be anything. Just, most likely it’s not breast cancer. You’re too young for that. So then I went to get the ultrasound and there was the technician who begins the ultrasound and she’s taking a bit of time and I said, you know, is everything okay?
[00:15:50] And she said, well I have to go get the doctor. So I know that’s more concerning. So the doctor comes in and she said, it’s breast cancer. She said it’s stage one and it’s in multiple quadrants. And and it’s luminal B. We find out a little bit later and luminal B is an aggressive cancer. And she says to me, it’s in multiple quadrants.
[00:16:17] So I’m going to make a bet that it’s in both breasts. Later on, I speak to doctors and they’d say, no, it’s, I mean, it’s that’s a little bit crazy. Like that’s really rare for it to be in both breasts. So don’t worry about that. Dr. Holly bodies. talking to me about my options. And she said, you could do a lumpectomy, but if you do a lumpectomy, your risk of getting breast cancer will remain at 37.
[00:16:48] 3 percent because you’ll have breast tissue. And she suggested I get a double mastectomy. And I didn’t really flinch because I had I didn’t really have a real strong stance on that or feeling about it. And I was naive and how it would look afterwards and. how I would identify with myself. So I said, okay, that’s what I have to do.
[00:17:17] I have to do it. And I just got really focused. I had said this before, but I, during the whole treatment journey, I’d only cried twice. And that’s because I just really had to focus. I had to be so focused. I was told I was going into battle. She said, look, you have a little baby at home. You can’t mess around with this.
[00:17:45] You got to take it really seriously. So I said, okay, I told John on the way home, he knew I had to go in. He obviously he knew about all the testing I was getting. And I remember not being able to say the word breast cancer. I was not, I was like I have, I just couldn’t finish it. And I felt, I remember thinking like, this is what you see in movies.
[00:18:09] And it feels a little bit like overacting when I see it in movies, like they’re taking this big dramatic pause, but it is It gets caught in your throat and I didn’t realize how taken aback I would be and how scared I would be. I didn’t let that fear come into my head and guide me, but it was certainly there.
[00:18:36] And he just said come home, come straight home. And after that go through a lot of appointments to find my. my team of doctors and Dr. Alibadi was Really pressing home something that I think is Paramount for women going through breast cancer to know it is so important to know this She’s like you have to find a surgical oncologist Who will take out all of your breast tissue?
[00:19:15] You cannot have anybody who will knowingly leave a little bit behind and She’s like, they have to be as aggressive as possible because any breast tissue left behind keeps your risk really high and cancer can grow in just in the tiniest bit of tissue. And so I, I had met surgical oncologists and one of my first questions was, What do you think about breast tissue?
[00:19:40] And there were some people who said, you know, you don’t, you can’t really take all of that out or you don’t really have to take all of that out because a little bit of breast tissue will help your reconstruction look better and it won’t look, you know like two round globes and you won’t see the wrinkling of the breast implant because, you know with my mastectomy, I have no tissue left.
[00:20:01] So I just have skin. muscle and then the I bend down, you see the wearing a bathing suit, y the top of my chest, at the top and then aroun
[00:20:19] It’s amazing. Dr. Oranger did the most amazing job when I’ve seen double mastectomies, but it’s not the same as having your real breast or having an augmentation. So I think it’s so important for women going through breast cancer to know that they have to find a surgeon who says, no breast tissue can be left behind.
[00:20:43] So I find my team, my surgical oncologist is Dr. Armando Giuliano, who is the godfather of breast cancer. He is the pioneer behind the Sentinel node. The Sentinel node is a procedure where lights up which lymph nodes are the first to be hit by the cancer. And if those nodes, if those lymph nodes are clear, then you don’t have to worry about cancer having made it into the other lymph nodes and into the rest of your body.
[00:21:18] It used to be that they would just take out the lymph nodes. because they want to be extra safe. But that creates a host of other problems and a lot of pain. And you can go online and just see all of the problems with that. And my heart goes out to any women who have to have them removed.
[00:21:40] Cause I know how difficult that can be and how, you know, the rest of their life is a lot of concern and and ailments. So he did the, a nipple delay on me. Nipple delay is a procedure you do 10 days or two weeks before your double mastectomy and it gives your nipples a chance to survive.
[00:22:06] When you have a double mastectomy, you go through, you know, all your blood vessels as well. And when you have, your blood vessels cut off, a lot of blood can’t make it to the nipples and then it won’t bring oxygen to the skin and to the nipples and they can die off. And so I did the dimple delay. I did the sentinel node.
[00:22:27] the lymph node dissection. And and another thing about going to your doctors, one thing I also implore people to ask is, what is their necrosis rate? You want to ask both your surgical oncologist and your reconstructive plastic surgeon what their necrosis rate is. Your breast can get necrosis. The skin can get necrosis and die.
[00:22:51] And once that skin dies, it’s gone. It’s, you know, you can’t replace it. And that’s also why I was really happy to do the nipple delay because I was just giving myself more of a chance to to not get necrosis. After those two procedures, I went and had my double mastectomy. And before I went in, that was the first time I cried.
[00:23:17] I was going into a really big surgery and I had my baby at home and Just the fear that something may go wrong and I wouldn’t make it and I won’t be able to come home. I remember just thinking like, Oh, I didn’t hug him enough. Oh, I didn’t write a letter. Oh, I should have made more videos talking to him.
[00:23:38] Like I just thought like of all the things that I wish I, like I left behind for him to see or find or anything like that. So after the double mastectomy, Dr. Oringer put in expanders and it was a week after and I go do my checkup with Dr. Oringer and I look in the mirror for the first time and I was in shock and he’s looking at it having seen a million reconstructions and he knew that it looked great for what I had been through and he says the word fantastic he said this looks fantastic and I think that was the thing that shook me to my core and put a panic in me because what’s better than fantastic and I’m looking in the mirror and my you know, with the expanders, I did not realize that it would look different after reconstruction.
[00:24:42] He did tell me that, but I just couldn’t put my mind around it. My, you know, expanders, your breasts at higher, they kind of have, they are deformed in some ways and they don’t look rounded. They have a little bit of a square kind of rectangular kind of look. And I didn’t say much in that appointment and I had gone to that appointment alone because I was feeling So good.
[00:25:10] And I felt, yeah, I’m just gonna go get checked. And I remember I came home and I undressed again and I looked in the mirror. I just started crying. I cried in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever cried before in my life. I remember thinking, what am I gonna wear? What, what is going to look like and I’m in the public eye and what will people say and, you know, at that point, I didn’t think about or know that I would, take my story public.
[00:25:47] So I just thought, Oh, I’m going to have people judging me and there’s going to be like TikToks and Instagram reels and everybody and people just wanting to break down like, Oh, look at her bad boob job. And she thinks it looks good. And they were just be like, people not knowing and just judging me. And I just cried and cried and cried.
[00:26:11] And then eventually I started to understand more and then in September I got my reconstruction and I woke up and I was like, okay, there, there was a better end to this journey. Now again, it’s still not the same. Like I said earlier, there are a lot of things about it that don’t look like my breasts from before.
[00:26:33] And I think the biggest thing is my scars. I have a lot of scars. And deep scars and because of my anatomy they show up more. They’re not like hidden underneath the armpits and things like that. So that’s my surgery timeline. And then I started Lupron to suppress my, hormone production in my ovaries.
[00:26:58] Now my breast cancers I am estrogen positive, progesterone positive, HER2 negative. That’s We had gone through the options of treatment afterwards, and I remember talking to Dr. Giuliano when I came in to see him. He said, you have some decisions to make. You can either, you know, it looks like you’re on the borderline for chemo and radiation, or you can stick to just the hormone suppressant route, and you should talk to your oncologist about that.
[00:27:23] So I sat down with my oncologist, Dr. Monica Mita, talked about doing hormone suppressant for five years. starting with Lupron. It would be a monthly shot, but I travel a lot. So I asked her for the three month shot. It was like one or two days later that I just was in a debilitating state. It was incredibly hard.
[00:27:53] And I had friends saying like, don’t worry. You know, I know you’re sad that you can’t be there for Malcolm a lot and you’re sleeping all the time, but it’s not just his childhood I was missing. It was my motherhood. I was missing. Like I don’t want to miss these moments. I want to remember all these moments and I just, I couldn’t take it.
[00:28:13] So after six months of it, I went to Dr. Mita and said, can I take out my ovaries? And she said, that is an option. And I asked like, why didn’t you offer that in the beginning? She’s like, well, you know, I’m still in my childbearing years and I still have my fertility. So a lot of. The studies have shown and the research has shown that you could be on Lupron and Arimidex or any other aromatase inhibitor.
[00:28:41] And if you wanted to have children, you could stop and harvest more eggs. But I had, thankfully, when I was in my early 30s, I froze my eggs. My eggs from when I was 34, we turned them into embryos and I had four boys, one girl. And I was like, Oh, I don’t know about those numbers. Let me let me, let’s just try, let’s try to get a couple more.
[00:29:07] And I said, I want to get I just want to get one more girl. And Dr. Wong said, yes, we’re going to get one more girl. And then we call it. So then you have two frozen and then you’re, you have a really good shot. And so I did my first, I did my, not my first. So I did my egg retrieval with him.
[00:29:26] And he said at your age, one out of 10 eggs will be viable. So then we got the eggs out and I got seven, which I know is a great number, but out of those seven, only two were strong enough to go onto the, to the testing stage, which is to test if they’re normal or abnormal. And if it’s a girl or boy, and I remember sitting with John and saying, I know Dr.
[00:29:52] Wong said only one more girl, and then we call it after that. But I just, in my heart feel that we need two more. And I know that I’m putting myself at risk, but I need you to support me. This is what I feel strongly about. And John said, okay, we’ll do this. When we got home that day, we got a call from Dr.
[00:30:16] Wong and he said, the test results have come back and it’s the dream. It’s two baby girl embryos, both healthy. So very excited. And one of those embryos was my little baby girl, May, that’s here right now. So then I was on Lupron and it got off of that. Then I decided to do an an ophorectomy and a partial hysterectomy.
[00:30:39] I wanted to do the partial hysterectomy because I just wanted to minimize risk factors, you know, this two more places where I didn’t have to worry about cancer. I took out my uterus, my fallopian tubes and my ovaries. I left my cervix. Which would have been a a full hysterectomy if I tip out the cervix, but I left my cervix because one, we tested me for HPV and I don’t have it.
[00:31:04] And if I did have it, I would take it out after I got that procedure done. It was like a sheet was lifted off of me. I had energy. I was, it was amazing. And then let’s see it was like, like later in the summer of 2024 recently I had to start an aromatase inhibitor and I started Arimidex and that has been incredibly difficult.
[00:31:34] My personality changed being just really temperamental short tempered, quick to anger, quick to frustration. I remember feeling like this isn’t, gosh, I want to stop feeling this way. It felt like at times I was just, when I was not quick to anger and angry or mad about something. The rest of the time I felt like I had a hand on a door that had a monster behind it and at any second it can burst through and just my personality would change and it was really difficult and thank God John was so patient and kind and, you know he’s not a quick to anger person can actually take a lot.
[00:32:23] So He was the right person for me to kind of help me through that and I remember finally just breaking down to him This was not that long ago. This was a couple days after my baby was born and Then I remember just breaking down and sobbing and clutching to him and just saying like I need help.
[00:32:45] I need help. That was the first time through that medication that I had Just said clearly I need help so then I went back to dr. Mita and I said I cannot do this I cannot go five years. I know that I’m putting myself at risk, but I don’t know what to do I don’t know. I mean I was so postpartum with Malcolm and then I went through cancer after that And so I just felt like I can’t miss any more of his little life and I’m not gonna do that with my baby girl and I just please help me and so then they put me on letrozole and After the letrozole, I started feeling immediate anxiety, just the tightness in my chest.
[00:33:22] So where I’m currently at right now is we’ve stopped that medication just to kind of equalize, and then we’ll start another medication after that to try. And I think that’s, anyone on the breast cancer journey understands there’s just like this constant shuffling of medication to figure out what’s the one thing that will help and and not make you lose your mind.
[00:33:49] So that So this is a two part podcast of just my surgery and treatment plan.
[00:33:56] Adam Walker: We have been thrilled to have Olivia Munn on the show today. And this is just part one of the conversation. We’re going to keep it going with part two. So make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on this conversation.
[00:34:09] Olivia Munn, part two, coming out soon. We’ll hear more of Olivia’s story next week. More of her wisdom and have more conversation.
[00:34:22] Thanks for listening to Real Pink, a weekly podcast by Susan G Komen. For more episodes, visit realpink. komen. org and for more on breast cancer, visit komen. org. Make sure to check out at Susan G Komen on social media. I’m your host, Adam. You can find me on Twitter at AJ Walker or on my blog, adamjwalker.
[00:34:39] com.