Opening up.

Former Bachelorette Katie Thurston was diagnosed with breast cancer early last year and has been keeping followers updated with her treatment journey online.

Katie later revealed the news that her breast cancer had spread to her liver and is now at stage 4. Soon after, she started a new treatment plan and the tumors in her body have been shrinking.

Recently, Katie paused her cancer treatments for a short period of time and prepared for a double mastectomy she received last week, followed by implants directly afterward.

Now, the Bachelor Nation star is detailing her recovery from surgery and nerve preservation five days post-operation. 

In a new video on social media, Katie got candid about how she’s honestly feeling after her double mastectomy. 

She shared, “To be honest, for being on day five, I think I feel way better than I expected. And based on some other people’s stories, I know we’re all different, I just feel like a lot of these different things [I’m doing] really helped get to where I’m at right now.”

Katie updated that her chest is currently covered in bandages and she will get her drains removed soon. She then shared more details about her surgery and why she opted to undergo nerve preservation. 

“I did have lymph nodes removed because I’m stage four so we know there was lymph node involvement,” she said. “And then we did nerve preservation, which the way to kind of explain that is 1) it’s not covered by insurance so I don’t feel like it’s talked about enough. But when you have a double mastectomy, they just basically scoop out your breasts and your nerves and whatever else, they just take it away. And what ends up happening, is you potentially… lose feeling.”

Katie went on, “You can’t feel your breasts, some people can’t feel their stomach, their chest. And so with nerve preservation, it’s a separate doctor who specializes in it, but what they do is they basically take the time to pull away the nerve, take what they need, and then put the nerve back. It will take I’m sure a minimum of a year or more to really re-train those nerves and let those nerves heal and recover to get back the sensation. But that was something I opted for just for the quality of life… I just wanted to try my best to feel normal in a very not normal situation.” 

The Bachelor Nation star expressed that wanting to feel normal is the same reason she decided to get implants directly after her mastectomy, and reassured, “Overall I’m feeling good, I’m recovering.”