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NEED TO KNOW
- Katie Thurston said her current breast cancer medication is working so she is planning to have a double mastectomy
- The former Bachelorette said she’ll likely get a “boob job” after the mastectomy
- She said she’s optimistic that one day she’ll be able to tell people that there’s “no evidence of disease”
Katie Thurston is preparing for a double mastectomy amid her stage 4 breast cancer journey.
The Bachelorette star made an appearance on the July 29 episode of Kaitlyn Bristowe’s Off The Vine podcast alongside her husband Jeff Arcuri. The 34-year-old — who announced her breast cancer diagnosis in February — opened up about her treatment plan. She’s currently undergoing hormone-blocking therapy, among other medications.
Bristowe, apologizing for being uneducated on the matter, asked if Thurston needed to get her “boobs removed.”
“We waited to see that the medicine is working. And it is,” Thurston shared. “So we're gonna basically give it three more months, and then I can do a double mastectomy, get a boob job if I want, which is, I think, the route I'm gonna go.”
She added that she’ll eventually have questions about breast implants to ask Bristowe, who shared in May that she got new implants. However, Thurston expressed her frustration with having to go through a mastectomy in the first place.
“It's been a challenge of like, I've worked my whole life to finally be confident in my breast era and then you're telling me I gotta chop them off and get new ones?” she said.
Despite the upcoming surgery, Thurston has remained optimistic about her breast cancer journey.
“My hope for the future is that, whether it's this year or next year, I'll be like, ‘Hey guys, there's no evidence of disease,’ ” she said on the show. “Even though technically, stage four is not curable. Technically, medically, I will have breast cancer forever. But with so much advancement happening and the way that I caught it when I did, I'm very optimistic.”
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Bristowe commended her positivity and asked how she avoids spiraling. Thurston immediately replied that she does spiral.
“I think you just have to allow yourself to spiral. You can't bottle it up,” she explained. “So, there's certainly days where [Jeff] and I are just bopping around town, having a great day, laughing. And then there's days where I'm just on the couch and he's like, ‘What can I do for you? Are you okay?’ And I’m just like, 'I need to cry today.' ”
“So I just think you have to go through the highs and lows and know that that’s constant,” she added. “There’s no finish line in this healing journey.”
