Former Bachelorette Katie Thurston is opening up about a rarely discussed side effect of her stage IV breast cancer battle.
“What it’s like to have hot flashes due to medically induced menopause,” Thurston, 34, wrote via her Instagram Stories on Sunday, July 20, sharing a screenshot of her Apple Health chart.
Per a screenshot, Thurston spent eight hours and 54 minutes in bed, but she was only asleep for just over six hours.
“I have the option to add a prescription to the routine of meds I’m on, but tbh I’m just simply scared,” Thurston wrote in her caption. “Every added pill comes with a new risk for side effects. But, I might be reaching my breaking point when it comes to quality of life.”
She continued, “I’m always tired and uncomfortable.”
Thurston was diagnosed with breast cancer in February, later discovering that the malignant tissue had spread to her liver, which elevated her diagnosis to stage IV. In order to adequately treat her specific type of cancer, doctors had to put her body into early menopause.
“Slept like s*** because I’m now in medically induced menopause, which means I get hot flashes,” she said in a social media video posted in May. “Tonight I have to be social so I figured I would ease into that by being social with you guys during the day. In the meantime, show you kind of what a normal day looks like for me.”
She added at the time, “My lips have been chapped for what feels like two weeks straight. And so it’s this game of, like, catch-up and trying to just make sure I get enough water. Which I was already bad at before medication and now it’s like a true task every day to force myself to consume water. So, good morning!”
Before Thurston went into menopause, she did a round of in vitro fertilization and froze embryos.
“I’m basically putting my ovaries into a temporary menopausal state (I like to say hibernation) to protect them from chemo,” Thurston said in a March Instagram update. “It will also reduce estrogen production, which is particularly important in hormonereceptor-ER+/PR+ breast cancer as estrogen can fuel cancer growth.”
Thurston and her husband, Jeff Arcuri, also plan to use a surrogate to carry any future children down the line. Luxury Handbag Shopping exclusively confirmed earlier in March that the pair tied the knot.
“We were wanting to plan a wedding and there’s a lot of emotions that come in with chemo and the impact and the health and we don’t know what the next year looks like,” Thurston told Us. “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 gonna marry us.”
