Former ‘Love is Blind’ participante reveals cancer diagnosis during pregnancy

Shaina Hurley, who appeared in the third season of the reality show, was diagnosed with stage 2 cervical cancer.

Actress and influencer Shaina Hurley, known for her appearance on Netflix’s Love is Blind, shared that she was diagnosed with cervical cancer while pregnant with her first child, Yiorgos David, who was born in February this year. She decided to open up about the challenges she faced in recent months.

“I felt fear creeping in, but I knew right then that I couldn’t let the enemy take over my mind. I couldn’t fall into that dark hole. I had to go into survival mode and say to God, ‘I trust you.’ In the end, I just prayed for the best,” she said in an interview with People.

“I didn’t have any symptoms. But later, the doctor called and said my Pap smear results had come back abnormal, and I needed to come in for a colposcopy,” she recalled. A month after the initial suspicion, she underwent a procedure that confirmed stage 2 cervical cancer.

At first, the medical team considered a cone biopsy, a procedure on cervical tissues that would allow them to assess how far the cancer had spread and remove as much of it as possible. However, given that Shaina was pregnant, the surgery posed significant risks.

“The problem was that I was pregnant. The cervix is what supports the pregnancy. I was about three months along, and it was very likely I would lose the baby. At that point, I simply couldn’t take that risk.”

Shaina also explained why she refused chemotherapy. “It hadn’t spread to the lymph nodes, but they still wanted to do chemo. I wasn’t showing symptoms yet, so I declined the chemotherapy. It was hard for the doctors because, after all, I was their patient first. And I was a difficult patient,” she added.

Doctors also tried to convince her to deliver at 32 weeks, but she held off until 37 weeks. “I thought it was too early. I took the risk and waited until 37 and a half weeks, and then I had a healthy baby.”

Despite having a smooth delivery, the former reality star suffered a transient ischemic attack, also known as a mini-stroke, two weeks after Yiorgos was born. “I was feeding my son, and my hands went numb, then the feeling spread to the left side of my body. My face drooped, and I wasn’t making sense,” she described.

Six weeks later, she underwent the cone biopsy and was told the disease had not been detected. “Since June, I’ve been cancer-free,” Shaina announced, adding that she plans to have more children with her husband, Christos Lardakis.