Coping With Pregnancy and Cancer
- “Love Is Blind” alum Shaina Hurley, 35, faced stage 2 cervical cancer while pregnant. A routine pap smear revealed the cancer when she was just three months pregnant. Hurley remains grateful she was able to have a healthy young boy before undergoing cancer treatment. She’s now cancer-free.
- Cervical cancer begins in the cells lining the cervix, the lower part of the womb (uterus). Treatment options for cervical cancer include surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation therapy. HPV (human papillomavirus), a sexually-transmitted virus, causes more than 70% of cervical cancer cases.
- Pap smears are one way to detect cervical cancer early. During the test, a doctor will collect a sample of cells from your cervix (using a small brush or spatula). The cells are then examined under a microscope for abnormalities, including cancer and changes that could indicate pre-cancer.
- Doctors should bring up fertility preservation with every woman of childbearing age before she starts cancer treatment. In Hurley’s case she was already pregnant with her child when she was diagnosed and underwent surgery after giving birth. She didn’t need to undergo chemotherapy.
Hurley, who shares her first child with her husband Christos Lardakis, learned she had cancer after a routine pap smear when she was three months pregnant. She was declared “cancer-free” in June 2024, following a cold-knife conization [a surgical procedure to remove the cone-shaped piece of tissue from the cervix] not long after her son’s birth.
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In another post, Hurley shared a family photo from over the holidays, showing her and her three loved ones, her husband, son, and Lardakis’ three-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, sitting happily by a Christmas tree.
She captioned the Instagram post, “Merry Christmas – love, The Lardakis family.”
We’re delighted to see Hurley closing off her year with heartwarming memories, especially after facing such a jarring diagnosis while pregnant, something she spoke about on the late Shannen Doherty’s “Lets Be Clear” podcast.
“Thank you so much to Shannen Doherty’s @letsbeclearpod for having me on their platform to share my in depth testimony,” Hurley said.
“I pray this will reach the person who needs hope. Remember God is our rear guard and He goes before us.”
In a video clip, showing part of Hurley’s interview, she opened up about making the decision to put off cancer treatment so she could carry out her pregnancy.
She explained, “I was three months pregnant at this point, and the tricky thing is when you have cervical cancer, being pregnant, the cervix is what holds pregnancy.
“So it was really tricky what the next steps were going to be. Usually when a woman finds out that she has pre-cancer cells or she has cancer cells is they will do the procedure to cold knife cone. It’s where they cut a cone shape into the cervix to try to get all the cancer out.”
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Hurley continued, “That problem being I’m pregnant, the cervix is what holds pregnancy. I asked what the risks were with me being able to carry the pregnancy, and it was a high percentage that I would lose the baby, and I immediately couldn’t bear the thought of miscarriage.
“And so I ended up turning down that procedure, which it’s tricky again because when they do that procedure, they could take those biopsies and they can tell you what stage it is, where exactly it’s at. And so me turning down this procedure, you’re going blindly into having cancer pregnant.”
She later added, “I did choose the baby’s life, which again this isn’t medical advice for anybody. I think every situation is different, but I really just in my heart had a peace that I was going to be fine, that the board was going to sustain me.”
Thankfully, the procedure she later underwent to remove the cancer was a success and she has since been declared cancer free.
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Shaina Hurley’s Cervical Cancer Journey
Hurley told People last year about her cancer journey, saying, “I had no symptoms. But later, the doctor called me and said the pap smear results had come back as abnormal and they needed to get me in for a colposcopy.”
She was informed just weeks after her colposcopy [when a doctor examines the cervix and tissues surrounding it for cell changes that could lead to cancer] that things weren’t “looking good.”
Doctors quickly confirmed she had cervical cancer. Hurley told the celebrity news outlet, “I felt the fear creeping in but I knew then and there, I can’t let the enemy take over my mind. I can’t go down that dark hole. I had to go into survival mode and tell God, ‘I trust you.’ I just prayed for the best, at the end of the day.”
Then, instead of having a cone biopsy to check if the cancer had spread, a procedure that came with risks she didn’t want to take while being pregnant, Hurley, who was 22-weeks pregnant at the time, had a laparoscopic surgery to check if the cancer hadn’t spread to her surrounding lymph nodes.
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She continued, “It hadn’t spread to the lymph nodes but they were still wanting to do chemotherapy. I still had no symptoms, so I did deny chemotherapy. It was hard for the doctors because I was their patient first. And I was a tough patient.”
Despite doctors advising it would be best if she delivered her son early at 32 weeks, she chose to take “the risk and pushed it to 37-and-a-half weeks and delivered a healthy baby boy.”
Hurley, who had biopsies taken during her C-section, told People, “My faith and my strong will kicked in and there was no other way I was going to do it. We had a miscarriage before Yiorgos and so when I finally got a healthy pregnancy, nothing was going to stop me. But it did put a gray cloud over it.”
Two weeks after the birth of her son she had a mini-stroke, which she recovered from, and four weeks after that incident she had an unsuccessful cold knife conization. She underwent an additional conization six weeks later, and by June 2024, she was declared “cancer-free.”
Hurley, who continues to get check ups at the doctor every three months, admitted her cancer journey made her “stronger,” and credits her strength as something she obtained through her faith in God.
Understanding Cervical Cancer
Cervical cancer begins in the cells lining the cervix the lower part of the womb (uterus). Treatment options for cervical cancer include surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.
It’s important to note that HPV (human papillomavirus), a sexually-transmitted virus, causes more than 70% of cervical cancer cases. Most cases of cervical cancer can be prevented with the HPV vaccine.
Expert Cervical Cancer Information
- New Hope for Patients With Cervical Cancer: Adding Immunotherapy Drug to Standard Chemo Treatment Could Improve Survival Time
- New Cervical Cancer Test Detects Disease Significantly Better Than HPV Test and Pap Smear
- HPV Vaccination Dramatically Reduces Cervical Cancer Rates; Everything You Should Know About The Vaccine
Additionally, other risk factors like smoking can make you about twice as likely to get cervical cancer as those who don’t smoke.
Cervical cancer screening is critically important because an earlier diagnosis can mean a better prognosis with broader treatment options.
The American Cancer Society recommends that cervical cancer screening begins at age 25, and people aged 25 to 65 should have a primary HPV test, an HPV test done by itself for screening, every five years. If primary HPV testing is not available, however, screening may be done with either a co-test that combines an HPV test with a Papanicolaou (Pap) test every five years or a Pap test alone every three years.
The most common symptoms of cervical cancer include:
- Abnormal vaginal bleeding, such as bleeding after vaginal sex, bleeding after menopause, after douching, bleeding and spotting in between periods or having heavier or longer (menstrual) periods than usual
- Unusual discharge from the vagina that may contain some blood and may occur between your periods or after menopause
- Pain during sex
- Pain in the pelvic region
Cancer Treatment and Fertility
Different cancer therapies can affect fertility and the patient’s ability to have children in the future. While Hurley did not undergo chemotherapy, many young people who do are encouraged to discuss their options for preserving fertility.
Whether or not chemotherapy makes you infertile depends on the type of drug and your age since your egg supply decreases with age.
“The risk is greater the older you are,” Dr. Jaime Knopman, a reproductive endocrinologist at CCRM Fertility in New York City, previously told SurvivorNet. “If you’re 39 and you get chemo that’s toxic to the ovaries, it’s most likely to make you menopausal. But, if you’re 29, your ovaries may recover because they have a higher baseline supply.”
Radiation to the pelvis can also destroy eggs. It can damage the uterus, too. Surgery to your ovaries or uterus can hurt fertility as well.
If you have a treatment that includes infertility as a possible side effect, your doctor won’t be able to tell you whether you will have this side effect. That’s why you should discuss your options for fertility preservation before starting treatment.
Freezing Eggs Or Embryos: What Should I Do?
Many younger women preserve their fertility before cancer treatment by freezing their eggs or embryos.
After cancer treatment, a doctor specializing in reproductive medicine can implant one or more embryos into the patient’s uterus or the uterus of a surrogate with the hope that it will result in pregnancy.
For patients who only freeze eggs before treatment, a fertility specialist can use sperm and eggs to create embryos in vitro and transfer them to the uterus.
When freezing eggs or embryos is not an option, doctors may try these approaches:
- Ovarian tissue freezing is an experimental approach for girls who haven’t yet reached puberty and don’t have mature eggs or for women who must begin treatment immediately and don’t have time to harvest eggs.
- Ovarian suppression prevents the eggs from maturing so they cannot be damaged during treatment.
- For women getting radiation to the pelvis, Ovarian transposition moves the ovaries out of the line of treatment.
The Power of Faith
Having faith can help keep your spirits high even during times of struggle — and Hurley is a testament to how spirituality can make the darkest days of the cancer journey seem brighter.
New York City Presbyterian Pastor Tom Evans previously spoke with SurvivorNet about the importance of finding ways to cope with the complex web of feelings you may be experiencing after a challenging health diagnosis like cancer.
“It’s important to reach out in a simple prayer to God, even if you’ve never prayed before, you don’t know what to say, a heartfelt plea, ‘God, help me, be with me,’” Pastor Evans explained.
“You can reach out to God, and you can reach out to people, your friends and family, and say, ‘I can’t do this on my own. I need you.’ It’s in that willingness to be open and to receive that we can find something deeper that we never would’ve encountered without this hardship,” Evans continued.
Opening Yourself Up To Others After a Cancer Diagnosis
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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