Fox News contributor Kat Timpf has given an update months after revealing she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Timpf, who is most known for her panel contribution to the late-night comedy show Gutfeld!, explained in June that hours before going into labor in February, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Since then, she has received a double mastectomy on March 19 — declaring herself cancer-free — and a reconstruction surgery over the summer. In a new interview with People, Timpf shared an update on her cancer journey, including yet another reconstruction surgery scheduled for later this year.
“I got the mastectomy roughly a month after I gave birth. So that meant the first six weeks of my son’s life, I wasn’t sure exactly what my prognosis was,” she told the publication.
“It’s scary, but it’s empowering,” she added. “Losing your breasts forever is devastating, especially when you just gave birth and everyone asks you about breastfeeding. It’s heartbreaking. But I keep reminding myself that I chose this over the alternative. Because the alternative would’ve been much worse for me.”
Adding a newborn child to the mix also resulted in struggles as she could not pick up her son on top of losing the ability to breastfeed.
“As a woman, as a mother, that was extraordinarily difficult because even though I knew it wasn’t my fault and that I did what I did so I could be in his life for as long as possible, it made me feel like a bad mom,” Timpf said.
Currently, the reporter and comedian is preparing for her nipple reconstruction surgery, scheduled for December 4.
“I’m very excited. I’m so so excited,” she said, joking about possibly throwing a party afterward to celebrate. “And then six months later I’m getting them tattooed.”
Despite looking forward to her final reconstruction surgeries and attempting to return to a sense of normalcy, Timpf acknowledged that there “really is no other side” of breast cancer.
“I’m a changed person. I am not gonna be the same person that I was before I was told that I have cancer. I had a very unique experience being faced with both life and death in the same day — the birth of my son and then the diagnosis of a disease that could have killed me,” she said. “And there’s the fear of it coming back. There is also the strength that I have now after going through all of that.”
“I never really fell into the ‘why me’ in the negative sense, because why does anything happen to anyone? But if it did happen to me and I have this platform, then maybe I can do some good in terms of raising awareness.”
She also hoped that young women could hear her experience and speak up if anything seems abnormal about their bodies. “I almost didn’t show my doctor my bump at all. And if I hadn’t, we could be having a very different conversation right now,” Timpf said.
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