The Bachelorette alum Katie Thurston has shared a major update about her treatment plan for stage 4 breast cancer.
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"Imagine you are 24 hours from starting your first chemotherapy treatment. You have a port installed. You have a chemo bag ready to go -- and then you get a call from your doctor who says, 'Hold on,'" Katie, 34, shared in an Instagram video she uploaded on April 10.
Katie explained how she was first diagnosed at Kaiser in Los Angeles with triple-positive stage 3 breast cancer and then received a second opinion and learned that, not only is she stage 4, but she might not be triple positive.
When Katie was transferred to Columbia in New York, where she currently lives with new husband Jeff Arcuri, doctors did a biopsy on her breast, lymph node and liver.
"All tests confirmed that I am HER2 negative," Katie revealed. "With Kaiser's results saying I was HER2 positive, Columbia decided to retest those samples. I got the confirmation a few days ago that I am, in fact, HER2 negative."
Katie went on to explain why this change in her diagnosis is important.
"Because of the cancer I have, this actually allows for an alternative treatment plan. This means no chemo," Katie said.
"I now have the option to do hormone-blocking therapy instead of chemotherapy. I'll be taking a drug called Kisqali, which is a targeted oral therapy, Letrozole, which is an anti-estrogen pill, and Zoladex, which is a once-a-month shot which will shut down my ovaries and help reduce estrogen."
Katie attempted to clarify how her treatment will be different from the prior plan to undergo chemotherapy.
"Basically, we have a cookbook of recipes to help fight this," Katie noted.
"And right now, I'm on Recipe No. 1. The approach we're going to be taking is going to give me the best chance at long-term control with less side effects."
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELORETTE' COUPLES NOWAs a takeaway from her video, Katie urged her followers -- who are going through a similar cancer battle -- to have a second opinion.
In the majority of breast cancers, the human epidermal growth factor 2 protein fuels cancer growth, but that's not the case for Katie.
However, Katie wrote in the caption to her post how chemotherapy is not completely off the table yet.
"Could I need chemo in the future? Maybe," Katie clarified.
"If this treatment stops working or if the cancer grows again, it's an option we'll revisit. We will closely monitor the treatment plan and make sure it's working for my body."
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Katie's hormone-therapy treatment will stop estrogen from fueling breast cancer cells to grow, according to the American Cancer Society. Chemotherapy, on the other hand, is designed to kill rapidly-dividing cancer cells.
Katie revealed her cancer had spread to her liver in late March.
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Katie publicly announced her battle with breast cancer in February.
"I had a small lump in my breast... I discovered it myself," Katie wrote via Instagram Stories at the time.
"[I] thought maybe it was my period [or] maybe it was muscle soreness from working out. But, eventually, this lump never went away."
When the lump remained for several months, Katie decided to visit her doctor for a mammogram, which ultimately indicated the presence of cancerous tissue.
Following her diagnosis, Katie sought fertility treatments so that she and Jeff can welcome children one day. She also got married on Saturday, March 22 in an intimate backyard wedding.
Katie said she and Jeff will have a bigger wedding, complete with personalized vows, after she beats cancer.
"It was this kind gesture of him saying, truly, in sickness and in health," Katie gushed to Us Weekly.
"He is proving that he's here to stay. He shows up every day and he does it in ways that just continue to surprise."
Jeff apparently decided that he wanted to be Katie's husband, officially, when she begins her treatment.
"I want to be able to be in the hospital with her and just be like, 'My wife's in there.' There's more power to that," Jeff said. "I don't want to be not with you for any of this."
Katie explained how she and Jeff don't know what the next year is going to bring and so they didn't want wedding planning to weigh on them.
"And one night he said, 'I want to show you that I still love you and that I'm here to stay. I'll get married to you tomorrow.' We flew our parents in from Michigan and Washington State. We got our marriage license and a friend is just going to marry us," Katie shared.
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"If you've ever looked at his page, you just can't help but truly fall in love with him as a person. His personality -- he's so pure and just charming," Katie recalled.
"So on March 22nd of last year, I sent a clip to my girlfriends. I had never talked to him. We had never met. I sent this clip and said, 'Future husband.' At the time, I didn't realize, but I was manifesting my actual future husband, so when we were looking at dates, I was like, 'Wait, it has to be March 22nd.'"
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After talking on the phone for three to six hours daily, Katie and Jeff met in person for the first time in Los Angeles in early May 2024. The pair then got engaged three months later in August 2024.
Katie added how Jeff's humor helps her and he's been to "every single appointment" with her thus far and administered all of her IVF shots.
"[Chemotherapy] does raise the risk of you not being able to conceive. Knowing that we wanted kids in the future, we thought, 'Okay, let's do IVF just to have that option.' We dedicated two weeks before doing anything else breast cancer wise to doing IVF," Katie shared.
Katie went on to share, "A lot of women don't even realize that you can take 10 days to dedicate time to your reproductive health and your future family plans. We were able to retrieve 17 eggs and of those 17, six became embryos."
Prior to falling in love with Jeff, Katie had a short-lived engagement to her The Bachelorette 17 winner Blake Moynes.
Katie's The Bachelorette season ended on ABC in August 2021, and then she and Blake -- a Canadian wildlife specialist -- announced their breakup only a couple of months later in October 2021.
Katie then went public with her romance with John Hersey, whom she had eliminated during Week 2 of her The Bachelorette journey, in November 2021. She was accused of moving on from Blake quickly with "a rebound" and emotionally cheating on her ex-fiance.
Katie and John split after less than one year together in June 2022, and Katie expressed on numerous occasions how John had dumped her after she allegedly gave the relationship everything she had.
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Katie then she decided to pursue a unique opportunity and look for love on FBoy Island.
Katie had a brief public relationship with FBoy Island's Vince Xu, but Katie announced their breakup in December 2023.
Katie then soft launched her relationship with Jeff in January 2024 when she was asked to give dating advice on Instagram, but she didn't reveal she was officially dating Jeff until June of last year.
Katie had announced at the time: "Safe to say he's making it to hometowns next week," which was a nod to her prior The Bachelorette stint in 2021.
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
