The Bachelorette alum Katie Thurston has confirmed that there is cancer in her liver, advancing her breast cancer to stage 4.
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"Unfortunately in my case, [a PET scan] did detect some spots on my liver that were a little suspicious," Katie explained in a video.
"Because of this, I did have to then do a liver biopsy to see if my cancer has spread. After days of waiting, unfortunately I did find out today that my breast cancer has spread to the liver."
Katie, however, seemed optimistic about her prognosis.
"It is fairly small, however that does put me at stage four," Katie noted.
Katie revealed her "new treatment plan," which does involve chemotherapy, is going to start on Friday, April 4.
"I know stage four can sound very scary, and it can be," Katie admitted. "However, 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."
Katie is under the care of a team at Columbia in New York, where Katie now lives. She had moved from Los Angeles to New York earlier this year to move in with her then-fiance Jeff.
"I'm very confident in the team at Columbia, and I just wanted to share that update," Katie said.
When Katie was initially diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in California, she had undergone a number of tests -- including an ultrasound, mammogram, CT scan, and MRI.
However, the former Bachelorette didn't have a PET scan until she transferred her care to Columbia.
RELATED LINK: 'THE BACHELORETTE' COUPLES NOWKatie 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."
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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.
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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 didn't know what the next year would like in terms of her health and so the idea of planning a big wedding brought on a lot of emotions for her.
"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 said.
Katie, who competed on Matt James' The Bachelor season before starring on The Bachelorette's seventeenth season, met Jeff on Instagram after sending her friend a video clip of one of Jeff's standup acts exactly one year prior to their wedding.
"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.'"
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.
The couple has been able to use their shared humor as a coping mechanism for Katie's ongoing cancer battle.
"He's been great at matching my energy... People say, 'You're so strong.' I might appear that way," Katie noted.
"But I'm also in therapy and some days, I'm very sad. Some days, we're very fun and playful and make very, you know, out-of-pocket jokes. So him just being able to match whatever mood shows up that day [is supporting me]."
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"[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.
After ending her relationship with John, Katie made a cameo on Bachelor in Paradise's ninth season in 2023 and found closure with Blake, who remained her friend post-show.
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
