Shaina Hurley was only a few months pregnant with her “miracle” child when she received news that would turn her world upside down: she was suffering from cervical cancer.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Love is blind star is speaking publicly about how she dealt with the news — and how trusting her instincts helped her through a tumultuous pregnancy that ultimately resulted in the birth of her healthy baby boy.
As of June 2024, Hurley is cancer-free, telling PEOPLE, “I’m on the other side now.”
On the other hand, and finally ready to tell her story.
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Shaina Hurley with her family.
Kiril Samarits
Love is blindShaina Hurley Welcomes First Child With Husband Christos Lardakis: ‘Our Miracle’ (Exclusive)
Hurley gave birth to her first baby, a son named Yiorgos David, with husband Christos Lardakis on Monday, Feb. 1, which she previously shared exclusively with PEOPLE. But the journey to her birth was a long one shrouded in joy, fear and uncertainty after a routine, eight-week pap test.
“I had no symptoms,” Hurley explains in a recent interview. “But later the doctor called me and said the pap test results were abnormal and they had to take me for a colposcopy.”
About a month later, she underwent the procedure, and the doctor “immediately told her, ‘It doesn’t look good.’
After the test was sent to Northwestern, doctors were able to confirm a day later that she had stage 2 cervical cancer.
“I felt fear creeping in, but I knew then and there, I can’t let the enemy take over my mind. I can’t go down into that dark hole,” Hurley says. “I had to go into survival mode and say to God, ‘I trust you.’ I just prayed for the best, at the end of the day.”
Doctors pressed Hurley to undergo a cold knife conization, a procedure that would allow them to see how far the cancer had spread and get rid of as much of it as they could.
But the procedure – which involves removing a cone of tissue from the cervix – carried risks.
“The problem is that I was pregnant. [The] the cervix is what holds the pregnancy. I was only three months old, and I would have most likely lost the baby,” Hurley says. “At that point, I just couldn’t take the risk.”
The next alternative, with Hurley 22 weeks pregnant, was to perform laparoscopic surgery to ensure the cancer had not spread to the lymph nodes.
“It hadn’t spread to the lymph nodes, but they still wanted to go to chemotherapy,” Hurley says. “I still didn’t have any symptoms, so I refused chemotherapy. It was difficult for the doctors because I was their patient first. And I was a difficult patient.”
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Shaina in the hospital.
Shaina Hurley
Over the next few weeks, Hurley says she acted as both an advocate for herself and her baby, rebuffing doctors when they suggested she deliver at 32 weeks, which would have allowed them to see if the cancer had changed or spread.
“I felt it was too soon,” she says. “I took a chance and pushed it to 37 and a half weeks and gave birth to a healthy boy.”
And while her birth went without major complications, she says her friends and family were worried.
“I don’t think my husband and I have had a bigger battle in our marriage,” she says. “He wanted a baby, but he would also say, ‘Shaina, I don’t want to lose my wife. I want you to be here and raise the baby’.”
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Shaina in the hospital.
Shaina Hurley
She adds: “My faith and my strong will worked and there was no other way to do it. We had a miscarriage before Yiorgos and so when I finally got pregnant healthy, nothing could stop me. But there was a gray cloud over it.”
While doctors were taking biopsies during her C-section, Hurley wasn’t out of the woods yet. In fact, two weeks after giving birth, she had a small stroke (TIA).
“I was feeding my son and my hands went numb, and then he shot down the left side of my body. My face hung, I didn’t make sense,” she describes.
She recovered from a small stroke without any major side effects and then, four weeks later, underwent a cold-knife conization that doctors had been urging her to do for months – but it was unsuccessful.
“They did the surgery, waited two weeks and it didn’t work,” Hurley says. “The cancer was still in there.”
Six weeks later, she underwent another cold knife conization, and two weeks after that, she received the words she had been praying for: “I’ve finally been cancer-free since June.”
For the next few years, he will go to the doctor every three months for check-ups. “We have to officially wait a year since the last surgery, just to make sure my body is fine,” she says, “but we want more babies.”
She continues, “For now, I’m focused on being a mom, day by day.”
Part of that day-to-day includes reconnecting with old castmates – e.g Love is blind Season 3’s Zanab Jaffrey, who recently visited Hurley in Chicago.
“I kind of isolated myself to protect my own mental health, but I opened up to Zanab and she checks in on me,” Hurley says.
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Shaina and Yiorgos.
Kiril Samarits
‘Love Is Blind’ star Shaina Hurley and her husband are expecting their first child: ‘Our hearts are full’ (Exclusive)
Hurley adds that she purposely avoided talking about her cancer publicly, choosing instead to stay strong and stay silent.
“My strength comes from my relationship with the Lord,” she says. “On this earth we suffer. But it is how we suffer, it’s a real test. If it wasn’t for my relationship with God, I don’t think I would have the strength.”
She adds that she wouldn’t even say the word “cancer” during or after pregnancy — until it’s out of her body.
Now, however, he sees the journey as one of strength. So much so that she will be speaking publicly about her cancer at a gala that she and her husband are co-chairing on November 2.
“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,” she says. – And that made me stronger.
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Source: HIS Education