Fashion influencer Bridget Bahl has tearfully revealed to her more than one million followers that she has breast cancer.
‘I’ve been avoiding making this video,’ the 40 year old began her video on Instagram Sunday evening. ‘It has been a really hard time.’
‘I found out that I have breast cancer,’ she said, later revealing that it had spread to her lymph nodes.
The fashion icon went on to issue a desperate plea to her online audience, encouraging others to get any health concerns looked at as soon as possible.
‘If you feel something, you have to say something and you have to get it checked out and do not wait. Do not wait.’
Bahl, who married Texas-based plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Chiodo in a lavish New York City wedding last year, said she and her husband were trying to have a baby when they received the devastating news.
She said she was ‘maybe one or two days’ into fertility treatment, and had a routine sonogram and blood work with her doctor, when she told him she felt something in her breast.
‘And he said, “We’re stopping right now, you have to… go in for imaging,’ Bahl recounted through tears.
At first, she said she did not think it was anything serious – chalking the lump up to a cyst that may have been caused by the hormones.
‘I felt great,’ she said.
Still, she went to a doctor for imaging, who told her, ‘I do not like what I see,’ and encouraged her to get a biopsy on the mass that same day.
The doctor called back just one day later ‘and unfortunately confirmed that I do have breast cancer and that it has spread to a lymph node.’
Bahl will now have to undergo chemotherapy, surgery and possibly radiation to treat the cancer.
She went on to explain that she decided to share the news of her cancer diagnosis with her followers because it ‘feels like way too huge of an opportunity to not share,’ noting that Instagram comprises 90 percent women.
‘I know that by sharing this I will help someone else catch it sooner, and that is reason enough for me,’ Bahl added in the caption to her video.
The average risk of a woman in the US developing breast cancer is about 13 percent, meaning that one in every eight women will develop breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.
But in recent years, incidence rates have increased by 0.6 percent – though the rise in incidence rates in women under the age of 50 is steeper at 1 percent.
Breast cancer is now the second leading cause of cancer death in women, only surpassed by lung cancer.
The chances that any woman will die from breast cancer is currently about 1 in 40.
Still, Bahl seemed hopeful, noting that the type of cancer she has is ‘very responsive to targeted treatment.
‘I know that I am going to be OK, and I just also know there’s a really scary road ahead and I don’t want to do it, but I believe through the grace of God I can do it,’ Bahl told her followers.
‘The last few weeks have been nothing short of a nightmare [with] just so many appointments and trying to make plans,’ she continued through tears, ‘and I have felt God many times throughout it.’
‘I am obviously scared of what is to come, but I know that God makes beauty from ashes. I know that He is here with me. That he hasn’t left my side and that I am going to be OK,’ she wrote in the caption to the video.
‘I am not looking forward to the next few months, but I know it will be a chapter in my life and not the whole book.
‘While it’s hard to see it right now, I believe that God will transform this struggle into something beautiful.’
Her husband then commented: ‘Love you. We’re gonna be ok.’
He later added that he is ‘proud’ of his wife for speaking up.