'Stage 4 isn’t the end': Reality TV star Katie Thurston further discusses her cancer diagnosis and treatment

34-year-old Katie, who rose to fame when she appeared on the hit reality dating show in 2021, was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer earlier this year.

Since publicly revealing her diagnosis in February, the star has been vocal on social media about navigating life with breast cancer. “It’s not out in our faces the way it needs to be that breast cancer is happening for women under 40, women under 30,” Thurston said in a new interview with Health. “If I had someone last summer doing what I’m doing now that was within my circle, I would have gone to the doctor a lot sooner.”

It was the summer of 2024 when Katie discovered a lump in her breast. It was pea-sized, felt like rubber, and hurt - and that made her think it couldn't be cancer. “You think, ‘I’m a young woman. Breast cancer doesn’t hurt,’” she said. She also admitted: “I just didn’t take it seriously.”

Katie also said that as she had previously had a benign cyst removed from her breast she assumed her new lump was also non-cancerous. Those two things led Thurston to put off mentioning the lump to a doctor. When she did then make an appointment early 2025, she got a cancer diagnosis she previously said she was “not prepared” for.

When the TV star first got her diagnosis, doctors in California gave her a Stage 3, triple-positive breast cancer diagnosis. But weeks later, when Thurston moved from California to New York City, for a second opinion she got a new diagnosis.

The reality star was then told she actually had Stage 4, hormone-positive, HER-2 negative breast cancer that had spread to her liver. She was given her new diagnosis 24 hours before starting treatment for her previous diagnosis, which would have included chemotherapy - something which her new doctors told her she no longer needed.

HER2-negative cancer grows more slowly than HER2-positive cancer, and it responds to different treatments. For Thurston, this meant no chemotherapy. Instead, she was prescribed two oral medications and a monthly injection.

“Chemo is a very heavy thing, and I think everyone can agree if they can bypass it, that’s going to be their preference,” Katie told Health. “I felt hopeful. In a weird way, I felt religious.”

As part of her new treatment plan, Katie will now wait for her three medications to shrink her tumour. Eventually, she’s likely have a double mastectomy to remove both breasts, according to Health.

Katie added that she’s hoping to use her platform to help break the stigma surrounding cancer diagnosis. “Stage 4 isn’t the end, as people view it to be,” she said. “Stage 4 is very much treated now as more like a chronic illness. [It’s] something we just maintain forever, as opposed to a timer on our life.”

The star, who married comedian Jeff Arcuri in March, is hopeful that she’ll one day be in remission, or as close to it as possible. She refers to her cancer as “little teenager punks” building an army of cancer cells. “It’s very possible, on a scan in the future, that there’s no army. You can’t even see it—no evidence of disease,” she added. “But we know medically it does exist in there somewhere.”