Olivia Munn recently opened up about her "devastating" experience with breast reconstruction surgery following a double mastectomy.
During the June 4 episode of the health and wellness podcast "SheMD" with Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi and Mary Alice Haney, the 43-year-old actress shared her journey after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Munn revealed that she initially felt uneasy about the reconstruction process after her doctor informed her she would need larger implants to fill the skin due to the significant amount of breast tissue lost during the mastectomy.
"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 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.'"
Despite her doctor's reassurance that the surgery results were "fantastic," Munn was heartbroken the first time she saw her new breasts. She had hoped for a "small and chic" look with the implants.
"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," 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.' 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.'"
While Munn has felt "much better" about the results over time, she admitted she still feels self-conscious about her appearance. This insecurity is "a big reason" why she decided to grow her hair out.
"I wanted to be able to hide the scars," she explained. "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," she added. “I don’t look the same, but that’s okay. I’m here.”
Munn's diagnosis came as a shock, especially since her mammogram three months prior had been clear, and she had recently tested negative for the BRCA cancer gene. “I was walking around thinking that I had no breast cancer,” she told. “I did all the tests that I knew about.”
Within 30 days, Munn underwent a lymph node dissection, a nipple delay procedure (a surgical procedure which spares the nipples), and a double mastectomy, followed by reconstructive surgery last fall.
Munn credits her ob-gyn's decision to calculate her lifetime breast cancer risk score using the Tyrer-Cuzick risk assessment calculator during a routine Pap smear for saving her life. The results indicated a high risk for breast cancer, leading her doctor to order an MRI.
Today, Munn is committed to raising awareness for other women at risk, attributing her lifesaving diagnosis to her ob-gyn's proactive approach. “If it wasn’t for Dr. Aliabadi, I’d still be going through life not knowing that I had breast cancer,” she told.
The Quran - Chapter Al-Qamar : 17
And We have certainly made the Quran easy to remember. So is there anyone who will be mindful?
وَلَقَدْ يَسَّرْنَا الْقُرْآنَ لِلذِّكْرِ فَهَلْ مِن مُّدَّكِرٍ (And indeed We have made the Qur'an easy for seeking advice. So, is there one to seek advice?....54:17).
The word dhikr in the prepositional phrase 'lidh-dhikr' has several shades of meaning: to remember or memorize or by-heart; and to take heed of admonition and warnings.
Both these meanings are equally applicable here. Allah has made it easy to memorize the Holy Qur'an. The followers of the previous scriptures were not privileged to memorize their entire book, word by word - whether Torah, Injil or Zabur.
It is one of the privileges conferred on Muslims that He has made it easy, even for the tender-aged children, to commit the entire Qur'an to memory, word for word, without missing out a single letter.
The Qur'an is preserved in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of Huffaz for the past fourteen hundred years in every age, people and their children of every level, in every region or territory of the world.
