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

• Mom of three Holly Pardue struggled with excessive bleeding after the birth of her third child in January 2024

• She was told it was just "stress and hormones" and advised to go for walks, but Pardue, who has a history of abnormal cervical cells and HPV, pushed for a pap smear

• Pardue, 31, was eventually diagnosed with late-stage 3 cervical cancer — and underwent chemotherapy and other treatment before she would have been due for her next pap smear

A mom of three says doctors originally dismissed her excessive postpartum bleeding as “stress and hormones” — and it was only after she demanded a pap smear that doctors learned she actually had cervical cancer.

After welcoming her third child, Roman, in January 2024, 31-year-old Holly Pardue struggled with excessive bleeding for six weeks. When Pardue — who also shares sons Frankie, 10 and Rafe, 7, with her partner Ben Rushmer — went to see her doctor, she says she was told, “‘You've just had a baby, just try and get some better nights' sleep, go out on some walks and hopefully things will die down,'” according to Kennedy News and Media via The Daily Mail.

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

Related: New Study Shows Stage 4 Cervical Cancer Cases Have Increased Since 2001

“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 of HPV, 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.

Related: Cervical Cancer Survivor's Dream of Becoming a Mom Comes True Thanks to Strangers: 'He's Ours' (Exclusive)

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, the Mayo Clinic says. However, these guidelines may be updated in the U.S. to a mandated HPV test.

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