ALLENTOWN, Pa. – For one Lehigh County woman, the kitchen has become more than just a place to make dinner.<\/p>\n
She’s using her love of cooking to connect with others fighting cancer, and to take back control of her own story.<\/p>\n
“I control everything, and I like that. It’s really the only place where I really want to have control,\u201d said Stephanie Kinsella.<\/p>\n
At 29, the Allentown resident is living with stage four metastatic breast cancer. She first felt something unusual in June of 2024.<\/p>\n
“I was showering, and I just felt something very off in my breast,” Kinsella explained.<\/p>\n
Three weeks later, she was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer.<\/p>\n
“My heart sunk; I didn’t know what to think,” Kinsella said.<\/p>\n
She went through chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and radiation. Eventually reaching a point where there was no evidence of disease.<\/p>\n
But just a few weeks ago, she had a seizure.<\/p>\n
“That’s when they found the brain lesion,” Kinsella explains.<\/p>\n
“They were able to confirm that it was the same breast cancer that I originally had just metastasized to my brain, and that I am now stage four, living with metastatic breast cancer at age 29,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Now, the woman is using the kitchen to tell her story.<\/p>\n
“This time around, I’m in fight mode, and I’m ready to combat. I’m ready to share my story,” she said.<\/p>\n
Pairing recipes with conversations about cancer.<\/p>\n
“Welcome to Cooking with Cancer, I’m Chef Steph,\u201d Kinsella said.<\/p>\n
“I try to make it very quick. I’m saying what we’re making, and then the cancer topic that I’m going to be talking about,” she shared.<\/p>\n
But underneath every recipe, the message is serious.<\/p>\n
“I really hope that I can help someone,” Kinsella said.<\/p>\n
“Just because your symptoms don’t look like traditional symptoms doesn’t mean that it’s nothing to worry about. Just because you’re under the age of 30 doesn’t mean you’re in the clear,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
While Steph keeps showing up on camera, she says she’s also learned a different way to approach the fight.<\/p>\n
“Give yourself grace to get through it however you can,” she says.<\/p>\n
For Steph, that means taking it one day, and sometimes one recipe at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – For one Lehigh County woman, the kitchen has become more than just a place to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232],"class_list":["post-297357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-allentown-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}