Former Bachelorette Katie Thurston has given her followers an update amid her treatment for stage 4 breast cancer.
Thurston posted on Instagram Reels on Sunday in honor of National Cancer Survivors Day. “I wanted to do weekly check-ins that are just like uncut, raw emotions of like whatever comes to my mind,” her post began. “Every day I’m alive, I’m a survivor. Go me, I guess.”
In the Reel, she said she just finished her second month of cancer treatment, but was struggling with some of the side effects. “My hair is coming out in an unnatural amount of clumps,” Thurston said. “Working on that.”
The former reality television star said she was also beginning to experience problems with her memory as she recalled one instance with her husband, Jeff Arcuri, as they were traveling and “going through customs” when Thurston couldn’t remember where she was from.
“[They asked], ‘Where are you coming from?’ And I looked at them and I was like, ‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember,’” she said. “Jeff and I got in a — not an argument, but you know, a little disagreement. I was like, ‘This has happened before,’ and he’s like, ‘When?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, but I know it has.’”
“Sometimes I’m like, stop feeling bad for yourself, but then other times I’m like, no, you’re allowed to feel bad for yourself. Cancer sucks,” the former Bachelorette star said.
Thurston first revealed her cancer diagnosis in February. At the time, she posted two photos of herself smiling on a beach, as she wrote, “Life update: I have breast cancer.”
In her Instagram Stories, she also did a Q&A session with her followers, where she shared how she found out that she had breast cancer.
“I had a small lump in my breast, around the 10 o’clock spot,” she wrote. “I discovered it myself. Thought maybe it was my period. Maybe it was muscle soreness from working out. But eventually, the lump never went away. I once had a benign cyst removed from the same breast and thought maybe it was that again. Went to the doc thinking it was going to be nothing. I was wrong.”
One month later, she announced her cancer had progressed to stage 4 and metastasized to her liver.
“I know stage four can sound very scary, and it can be,” she said in a video on Instagram at the time. “Given that I am triple positive and the spots on my liver are fairly small and detected early, I feel very optimistic on my outcome.”
