Mom, 31, Demands More Tests After Docs Dismiss Cancer Symptoms as 'Stress and Hormones': 'I Had to Advocate for Myself'

Mar. 15, 2025

Holly Pardue.Photo:Kennedy News and Media

Kennedy News and Media

A mom of three says doctors originally dismissed her excessive postpartum bleeding as “stress and hormones” — and it was only after she demanded apap smearthat doctors learned she actually hadcervical cancer.

The diagnosis, Pardue says, was “stress and hormones.”

Holly Pardue with her family (FROM LEFT) Frankie, 10, Rafe, 7, Ben Rushmer, and Roman, 11 months.Kennedy News and Media

“To me the bleeding was happening for a reason and I wanted to know what that reason was,” Pardue, who lives in the English city of Milton Keynes, says. She pushed for her doctor to give her a pap smear — a test that detects abnormal, or cancerous, cells.

“I had to advocate for myself and I said, ‘Look, I’m not happy.’ That is really hard for some people, to go against someone who, of course, they know best essentially, I do appreciate that,” she says, adding that when she told her doctor she wanted the test, he pointed out, “Your previous smear test was okay the last time you were looked at.”

But Pardue had a history ofHPV, which can cause cervical cancer, and previously had abnormal cells removed from her cervix. As she tells the outlet, “I knew that something was wrong. I knew there was something else going on and I’m glad I trusted in myself and spoke up.”

When she got the results of the smear, doctors at first told her she had  Stage 1B cervical cancer — but later scans showed it had spread to her lymph nodes. On July 17, she was told she had Stage 3C.

“To be told your stage was so high, it felt like a death sentence,” says Pardue, who began a six-week course of chemotherapy in August, before transitioning to radiotherapy and brachytherapy.

Stock image of a gynecological exam table.Getty

Getty

She won’t know until March, she says, if the treatment was successful. In the meantime, she’s dealing with the radiation damage. “Walking around hurts, which isn’t ideal at 31,” says Pardue, who also adds that she’s gone into early menopause.

“That’s really a tricky thing to juggle being so young, it’s not something I had on my to-do list any time soon,” says Pardue.

If she hadn’t pushed for the pap smear that discovered her cancer, Pardue says “We’d be looking at another year until my next smear and already I’ve done my treatment for my cancer.”

“It’s scary to think that I’d be waiting another year to find out that I’ve even got cancer,” she says. Current guidelines in the UK mandate a pap smear every three years — but in the United States, after age 30 it’s every five years, theMayo Clinicsays. However, these guidelines maybe updatedin the U.S. to a mandated HPV test.

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source: people.com