Her doctor put her on a special cancer protocol for egg retrieval—she couldn’t pump herself full of hormones in an attempt to hyper-ovulate, because even post-mastectomy, there was a risk she could be encouraging nascent cancer cells to grow. Instead, Munn’s course of treatment involved lower doses of hormones. “We just wanted a few more eggs,” she said. “At my age, one in every 10 eggs are healthy, and we were hoping to make one embryo from this retrieval.” But because of the cautious cancer protocol, the doctors were only able to get seven—down three from the goal, but still okay—to try to turn into embryos. from there, the hope was to get one single, healthy embryo.
While she and Mulaney waited to hear back, Munn leveled with her partner: For her to feel comfortable going through with any fertility-halting treatment, she needed to know the future of her family was viable, and it all rested on these embryos. If they didn’t come back healthy, she wanted to try for another egg retrieval round, even though she understood the risks.
“A few hours later, we got the call from my doctor,” she says. “He shared that we had two healthy embryos. John and I just started crying. It was just so exciting because not only did we get it in one retrieval, but it also meant that I didn’t have to keep putting myself at risk. It was just amazing.”
With this reassurance, Munn began the process that’s led her to today—and now, she’s focused on the present. “We are very protective of our little life, but I knew from the day she was diagnosed using the Lifetime Risk Test her doctor had done that it open-and-shut saved her life,” Mulaney says. “So, while we like to lead our life privately, I was completely supportive of Olivia sharing her story.” On March 13th of this year, she shared her diagnosis on Instagram, encouraging women to use the tool to calculate their own lifetime risk score and schedule doctor appointments (and the call to action worked, with over 23,000 people sharing their stories). When it comes to the future of their embryos, Munn is cautiously optimistic.
“When you’re pregnant with your own baby, it’s like teamwork—you and the baby working together to make their little life come true,” she says. “You’re doing all this work to eat well, try to not have anxiety, just do all the right things during the pregnancy. With a surrogate, you have to try to go find a version of yourself somewhere out in the world. Somebody that you trust as much as yourself to live their life as a pregnant woman the same way that you would. But a surrogate isn’t a scary prospect to me anymore because there’s nothing I can do. I don’t have the ability to carry a baby anymore, so if we want to build our family, this is our option. 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, because I know a lot of people don’t have those options.”