Fashion and lifestyle influencer Bridget Bahl revealed she has breast cancer in an emotional Instagram video posted on Sept. 22.
Bahl, 41, tearfully opened up about her diagnosis, which she received a few weeks ago while attempting her sixth IVF retrieval. “We just really want to have a baby,” said the content creator, who is married to plastic surgeon Michael Chiodo.
“I was maybe two or three days into the shots, and I had the routine bloodwork, sonogram with my doctor, and I told him I had felt something in my breast,” Bahl explained in her video. Her doctor immediately advised her to go in for imaging. She continued, “He got me in in like a day or two, and I was completely convinced that it was fine, it was just a cyst and it was from the hormones.”
Going in for scans, Bahl said she “really, truly did not feel worried” about the abnormality. “I felt great,” she added. “I feel great.”
As a mammogram and a sonogram, Bahl said she met with a “wonderful” doctor who showed her the mass and said, “Bridget, I have been doing this for a long time, and I do not like what I see,” the New York- and Dallas-based influencer recalled.
At the specialist’s insistence, Bahl did a biopsy that day, and the doctor called the following day to deliver the hard news: “Unfortunately, [she] confirmed that I do have breast cancer and that it has spread to a lymph node,” said Bahl.
She described her recent few weeks as “nothing short of a nightmare” between “so many appointments and trying to process and make plans.”
Bahl also shared that she will need to undergo chemotherapy, surgery and possibly radiation treatment. “The good news is that the type I have, it is very responsive to a targeted treatment, which gives us so much hope,” she told her 1.4 million Instagram followers.
“I know that I’m going to be okay, and I just also know there’s a really scary road ahead,” she continued. “And I don’t want to do it, but I believe through the grace of God I can do it.”
Currently, Bahl said she and her husband are finishing what will be their final IVF retrieval process.
“We didn’t start at the most ideal time. There’s not enough time to wait to do another round, so I’m just asking for prayers. I would just love to get another embryo,” she said. “It would mean so much to me if you guys could pray about it.”
Bridget Bahl and her husband, Mike Chiodo.
Bridget Bahl/Instagram
The social media star concluded by urging her followers to stay vigilant about their own heath. She reminded them to keep up with their routine breast self-examinations.
“This platform is like 90 percent women, and it feels like way too huge of an opportunity to not share,” Bahl said. “You have to do your self exams, and if you feel something, you have to say something, and you have to get it checked out. Do not wait … If you don’t wait, you will have such better opportunity to treat it and get it and fight it.”
Bahl concluded, “I am so grateful for you. I am so blessed by this community. I cannot encourage you enough to please, please do your self exams, and my hope is that this helps someone else.”
