Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi has been diagnosed with stage one cervical cancer.
The 38-year-old Jersey Shore star took to TikTok to share her cancer diagnosis and urge her followers to get their Pap smears, a routine screening procedure that collects cells from the cervix to examine them for cancer or precancerous cell changes.
She said: “Obviously not the news that I was hoping for. But also not the worst news, just because they caught it so early.
“That’s why I’m literally telling you guys to get your Pap smears done. I’m 38 years old. I’ve been struggling with abnormal Pap smears for like, three, four years now. And now look at me, and instead of just, like, putting it off because I didn’t want to go, and it hurt and I was scared, no, I just went and did it, [and] cancer’s in there, and it’s only stage I and it’s curable.”
Snooki – who has children Lorenzo, 13, Giovanna, 11, and Angelo, six, with husband Jionni LaValle - revealed she first had a colposcopy, which “took a chunk out of [her] cervix”, followed by a cone biopsy.
While cancer was found, Snooki was relieved to discover that it had not spread beyond the cervix.
While doctors have scheduled a PET scan to check for signs of cancer elsewhere in her body, Snooki is looking ahead to treatment for her cervical cancer and is considering a hysterectomy, a surgical procedure to remove the uterus.
She explained: “After that, I’m going to probably get the hysterectomy, because the oncologist said you can either do chemo, radiation or the hysterectomy. Obviously, I think the smart choice here is the hysterectomy. I’ll still keep my ovaries, which is a good sign, but the hysterectomy, got to get the cervix in, the uterus out and then possibly lymph nodes, because it can [spread there]. So I guess it all depends on the PET scan.”
And Snooki is determined to look on the bright side.
She told her fans: “Could be very much worse.”
