This must have been so, so scary! Love Is Blind‘s Shaina Hurley was secretly battling cancer while pregnant!
The Netflix star opened up about this unsettling health diagnosis in a new interview with People out on Wednesday, months after welcoming her firstborn son Yiorgos David with her husband Christos Lardakis on February 1. After keeping quiet during the thick of it, she’s now “on the other side” of this diagnosis and ready to be fully candid with fans.
Related: Love Is Blind Alum Stacy Snyder Comes Out As Queer!
So, how did all this begin? Her cancer diagnosis came after she went in for a routine eight-week pap smear. She felt fine, but doctors were concerned with the results, as she recalled:
“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 did so about a month later and the doctor told her “right away, ‘it’s not looking good.'” Oh, no. By the next day, the results had come back from Northwestern and confirmed that she had Stage 2 cervical cancer. She recalled:
“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.”
While she was praying, her doctors were urging her to undergo a cold knife conization, a procedure which would allow them to see how far the cancer had spread and hopefully get rid of as much as possible by removing a cone-shaped piece of the cervix. But because she was pregnant, this was a big no-no:
“The problem is, I was pregnant. [The] cervix is what holds pregnancy. I was at just around three months and so I would most likely lose the baby. At that point, I just couldn’t risk it.”
Instead, when she was at 22 weeks pregnant, she had a laparoscopic surgery to make sure the disease hadn’t spread to her lymph nodes. She was far from out of the woods, but held off on other harsher treatment to protect her baby, the reality star shared:
“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.”
Whoa. Such a big risk she was taking for her baby! And it wasn’t an easy thing for her to do as she had to advocate for herself and her child for weeks, going against doctors’ advice and even her husband’s wishes. For example, she denied her medical team’s suggestion that she deliver at 32 weeks. Shaina said:
“I felt it was too early. I took the risk and pushed it to 37-and-a-half weeks and delivered a healthy baby boy.”
But getting to that point proved challenging, she acknowledged:
“I don’t think my husband and I ever had stronger battles in our marriage. He wanted the baby but he would also say, ‘Shaina, I don’t want to lose my wife. I want you to be here to raise the baby.'”
Who could blame him? What a hellish conundrum to be faced with!
Shaina held strong, though, leaning on her faith to get her through the difficult time:
“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.”
What a bummer to be dealing with this during her first full pregnancy!
Biopsies were taken during her C-section. And just two weeks after giving birth, she had a scary mini-stroke (also know as a TIA), proving that she wasn’t out of the woods yet! She noted:
“I was feeding my son and my hands went numb and then it shot down the left side of my body. My face drooped, I wasn’t making sense.”
Yikes!!
Thankfully, she recovered from the mini-stroke without major side effects, and four weeks later she finally had a cold knife conization — you know, the procedure doctors had pushed for from day one! Only it didn’t work the first time:
“They did the surgery, waited two weeks, and it didn’t work. The cancer was still in there.”
Oof! So frustrating! Six weeks later, she did it again and two weeks after that she finally got the news she had prayed so hard for, she declared:
“As of June, I’m finally cancer-free.”
Amazing! What a relief that must have been — and how incredible that she was able to fight cancer AND give birth to a healthy baby at the same time! What a badass!
She credits her recovery to her faith and positive mindset, noting she didn’t say the word “cancer” during or after her pregnancy — until she was cancer-free. The TV personality told the publication:
“My strength came from my relationship with the Lord. On this earth, we do suffer. But it’s how we suffer that’s the real test. If it wasn’t for my relationship with God, I don’t think I would have had the strength.”
But she now knows how important it is to open herself back up to her community, especially as she begins to get more public with this health battle. So, she is reconnecting with Love is Blind co-stars, like season 3’s Zanab Jaffrey, who recently visited her in Chicago. Hurley shared:
“I did kind of isolate myself to protect my own mental health but I opened up to Zanab and she’s been checking up on me.”
So important to have the support of loved ones at a time like this! As she leans into mom life with fewer worries about her health, Shaina will have to hit pause on future baby-making to give her body time to heal. And, as she explained, she will be going in for check-ups every three months:
“We have to wait a year officially from the last surgery, just to make sure my body is okay, but we do want more babies. […] For now, I’m focusing on being a mom and taking it day by day.”
Plus, on November 2, she and her hubby are also set to co-chair the 10th Anniversary Wings To Cure Gala that will raise money for cancer research, where she will once again open up about her journey. She teased:
“I’ll be giving a speech with my testimony and we’ll be raising money for more cancer research. It’s a new journey for sure — a different life. And it made me stronger.”
Incredible! She has a very inspiring story to tell, that’s for sure. We’re wishing her continued health as she enjoys her new role as a momma and recovers from this cancer fight! Reactions, Perezcious readers? Share them in the comments (below)!
[Image via Shaina Hurley/Instagram]
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