Fashion and lifestyle influencer Bridget Bahl revealed she has cancer in an emotional Instagram video posted on Sunday, September 22.
“I found out I have breast cancer,” Bahl, 41, said, retelling the events leading up to the heartbreaking diagnosis. She was in the midst of her sixth IVF retrieval with husband Michael Chiodo when she felt a lump in her breast.
“I was maybe two or three days into the shots, and I had the routine blood work, sonogram with my doctor, and I told him I had felt something in my breast,” Bahl explained in the video, saying her doctor advised her to go in for imaging as soon as possible.
“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,” she continued, adding that she “really, truly did not feel worried” about the mass. “I felt great. I feel great.”
After the mammogram and sonogram, the specialist told Bahl she didn’t like what she saw in the images. Bahl got a biopsy immediately after and the doctor called the following day to deliver her diagnosis.
“Unfortunately, [she] confirmed that I do have breast cancer and that it has spread to a lymph node,” Bahl revealed, calling the last few weeks “nothing short of a nightmare” as she attended “so many appointments” and tried “to process and make plans.”
“We just really want to have a baby,” Bahl tearfully said of her and spouse Chiodo, a plastic surgeon, at the top of her video. Their current retrieval will be their final attempt at securing another embryo. “We didn’t start at the most ideal time,” she said. “There’s not enough time to wait to do another round, so I’m just asking for prayers.”
Bahl also shared with her 1.4 million followers that she will need to undergo chemotherapy, surgery and possible radiation to treat her type of cancer, which she says is apparently “very responsive to a targeted treatment, which gives us so much hope.”
“I know that I’m going to be OK, and I just also know there’s a really scary road ahead,” she went on. “And I don’t want to do it, but I believe through the grace of God I can do it.”
Many commenters shared love and support for Bahl, with fellow fashion influencer Aimee Song writing, “Sweet Bridget, I’m sending you so much love and strength. You’re going to get through this” and Olivia Culpo sharing, “Praying for you Bridget.”
Bahl ended her video by urging other women to go to their routine checkups and to be vigilant about preventative care.
“This platform is like 90 percent women, and it feels like way too huge of an opportunity to not share. 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,” she said.
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.”