“We said yes with joy. And life, with its most tender timing, said yes right back.”
Katie Thurston is learning to stay positive — and she has her husband to thank for it.
The 34-year-old Bachelor Nation alum announced that she was diagnosed with breast cancer on Instagram in February before revealing that it progressed to stage 4 the following month.
On March 22, one week before starting treatment, Thurston tied the knot with comedian Jeff Arcuri, 36.
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During a Q&A session on Instagram one week later, Thurston revealed that she and her husband decided that “surrogacy will likely be the best option for us” when it comes time for children, per The Independent.
Now four months later, Thurston is grappling with the reality that she will not be the one to carry their child.
During an appearance on Kaitlyn Bristowe's “Off the Vine” podcast, released July 29, Thurston opened up about the mixed emotions she feels and how her husband has helped her stay positive.
"We've had a lot of conversations about it, and there's all these moments that I feel like we won't get to have," she said.
"But, then he's very sweet and reminds me we still can do that,” she added of her husband. “We can still do a baby shower. We can still experience finding out the news."
Thurston went on to reveal that she often goes through the “ebbs and flows” of choosing surrogacy.
"As great as it would have been to carry my own child, there's also a lot that I can focus on my own personal health and healing my cancer versus [the] health of a child inside of me,” she explained.
“Carrying a baby is a lot of freaking work and my body can’t,” she added. “It needs to focus on itself.”
Thurston shares that she already has two embryos through IVF
During a March interview with Us Weekly, Thurston and Arcuri confirmed that they were fully aware of the risk of not being able to conceive following chemotherapy.
As a result, the couple said they spent two weeks undergoing IVF treatments at RMA of New York.
“Knowing that we wanted kids in the future, we thought, ‘OK, let’s do IVF just to have that option,’” Thurston siad at the time. “We were able to retrieve 17 eggs and of those 17, six became embryos.”
In their recent conversation with Bristowe, Thurston and Arcuri provided an update on their IVF journey.
“We went from 16 eggs to two embryos,” Thurston revealed before clarifying that eggs don’t always fertilize and mature — and, therefore, never become embryos.
She further clarified that a good embryo doesn’t always equate to a pregnancy.
“Even then, you still have to have it implanted. I won’t be able to. We have to do surrogacy,” she told Bristowe. “But two is great. Some people don’t even get two on their first try.”
“I don’t even know that I could’ve done another round,” she added. “It was such an emotional whirlwind with the hormones.”
Thurston and Arcuri announced their engagement in a joint Instagram post on Sept. 15 — three months after confirming they were a couple in June.
In their interview with Us Weekly earlier this year, Arcuri vowed to be by his wife’s side no matter what.
“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,” he told the outlet. “I don’t want to be not with you for any of this.”
ALSO ON MOD MOMS CLUB: Katie Thurston reveals results of major cancer scan months after starting treatment
“He is proving that he’s here to stay,” Thurston added. “He shows up every day and he does it in ways that just continue to surprise.”
