Daily Inspire
Katie Thurston is sharing her truth.
Nearly four months after the Bachelorette alum announced she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer, which has since progressed to stage four, she detailed a few of the difficult side effects she has been grappling with.
“I’m losing my memory,” Katie explained in a June 1 video shared to Instagram. “Going through customs and them being like, ‘Where are you coming from?’ And I looked at him and I was like, ‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember.’”
On another occasion, the 34-year-old—who tied the knot with Jeff Arcuri earlier this year—recounted getting into a “little disagreement” with her husband without being able to fully recall the basis of her arguments.
“I was like, ‘This has happened before,’” Katie recalled telling Jeff. “He was like, ‘When?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know but I know it has!’”
“We’re able to laugh about it now,” she continued. “Cancer is s–t. Sometimes I’m like, ‘Stop feeling bad for yourself.’ Other times I’m like, ‘You’re allowed to feel bad for yourself. Cancer f–king sucks.’”
Indeed, along with the recent memory loss, the reality star also revealed that her hair has been “coming out in an unnatural amount of clumps.” And after finishing two months of medication, she has been responsible for making “big decisions” about how she wants to treat her liver.
“I just finished my second month of treatment and if you’re asking how long treatment is, technically forever,” Katie noted, having decided to move forward with Histotripsy—a non-invasive treatment for liver tumors—at New York University. “I am optimistic about medical advancements in the future. Fingers crossed as a stage 4 girly.”
“It’s National Cancer Survivors Day,” she added. “Every day that I’m alive, I’m a survivor. So go me, I guess.”
After sharing that she entered medically induced menopause last month, Katie also detailed that the medication meant to suppress her hormones simply didn’t work. And if switching to another medication still doesn’t prove successful, she revealed she might have to “get my ovaries taken out.”
“Not ideal,” she admitted. “But the vacation was nice. Now I’m back at it again in New York City trying to live my best life as a f–king cancer patient.”
“Sorry, I’m not going to edit that out,” she concluded. “I’m just going to end this because I want it just to be my truth, I guess. Anyway, happy Sunday.”
For a closer look at Katie’s ongoing cancer battle, keep reading.
“I discovered it myself,” The Bachelorette alum wrote on her Instagram Stories in February 2025. “Thought maybe it was my period. Maybe it was muscle soreness from working out.”
Because Katie had a benign cyst removed from that same breast when she was 20, she assumed this new lump was something similar. But after it didn’t go away, she decided to get it checked out.
“Went to the doc thinking it was going to be nothing,” she continued. “I was wrong.”
“After then getting the mammogram, they wanted me to do a biopsy,” Katie explained in a March 18, 2025 Instagram video. “Only then can they confirm if it’s breast cancer. I think my appointment was February 5. And then by February 13th, I got the official call that it was indeed breast cancer.”
And she’ll never forget the moment she first got the news.
It was “the worst feeling I’ve ever felt,” the reality star, who noted her family doesn’t have a history of breast cancer, shared on Good Morning America March 19, 2025. “You’re just devastated. You’re so devastated. It’s so shocking. As a 34-year-old woman, you’re not prepared.”
Katie informed her fans of her stage 3 diagnosis on February 15, 2025.
“I experienced a range of emotions over the past two weeks,” she wrote on Instagram. “Despair. Anger. Sadness. Denial. And then strength. Purposeful. Ready. I cried a lot.”
And she expressed her intent to document her journey in the hope of helping others.
“One thing I did early on was search other stories like mine,” she continued. “Other young women with breast cancer. Invasive ductal carcinoma. Mastectomy. Pregnancy after breast cancer. All of their stories helped. So I intend to be the same for others. This is day one of sharing and is going to be a long one. This first step of acceptance of my reality was the hardest. But I am ready to fight this.”
“We thought we’d be planning a wedding,” the TV personality continued on GMA. “We thought we’d be trying for a baby. Instead, we know that this year is really dedicated to treatment and getting better.”
So, Katie and Jeff decided to freeze their embryos in case her cancer treatments affected her fertility. The FBoy Island star and the comedian documented their experience in mid-March and gave fans an update at the end of that month.
“I thought I’d share the outcome of embryo freezing,” she wrote on her Instagram Stories March 31, 2025. “We retrieved 17 eggs and attempted to fertilize them. Of the 17, only 6 were successfully fertilized. But then they have to make it to the blastocyst stage. Only three made it. And after genetic testing, we have 2 embryos we were able to freeze, one Grade B and one Grade C. This is the reality of IVF.”
Katie has also spoken about the possibility of using a surrogate down the line.
“Jeff and I discussed the importance of my health and that when the time comes, surrogacy will likely be the best option for us,” she wrote on her Instagram Stories. “A friendly reminder to stop judging celebrities who pursue surrogacy because you don’t know what they have going on in their personal lives.”
However, Katie told GMA she and Jeff are “also OK being a childless couple.”
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