Jessica Pettway, a beauty influencer, has died at 36 after being diagnosed with stage 3 cervical cancer. cancer.
She had shared her diagnosis nine months earlier in an honest Instagram post, where the mother of two described 'intense bleeding' and a prior misdiagnosis.
Despite receiving treatment, the lifestyle blogger passed away on March 11, as confirmed by her sister Reyni Brown in a poignant post.
‘It’s my birthday today, and the only thing I could ever wish for is for God to bring you back on this earth,’ wrote Reyni, reports E! Online.
‘I lost my beautiful big sister 2 days ago and my heart has never felt pain like this.’
She added that Pettway was the ‘most amazing, strong, confident’ woman she had ever met and that her life was filled with ‘wisdom’ because of her.
Reyni concluded: ‘Life will never be the same without her crazy laugh, pranks, or jokes. Loosing [sic] a sibling feels like a connection between us was destroyed. I love you with all my heart.’
Pettway revealed her diagnosis in a lengthy Instagram post, detailing her struggle surrounding her health.
In June 2022, she had begun experiencing symptoms, including ‘intense vaginal bleeding’, so called around her friends who all assured her this was normal.
Along with the bleeding, the influencer suffered from fatigue but wrote: ‘I accepted this as a “normal” symptom that most women go through.’
A month later her husband found her unresponsive in the bathroom, she was not breathing at the time.
They rushed to hospital, where Pettway was told her ‘extreme’ blood loss was due to ‘fibroids’ and a gynaecologist told her not to worry as her symptoms were ‘normal’.
Pettway shared: ‘I was passing clots the size of a placenta, which was really alarming. They kept me overnight and released me the next day.’
She received 10 blood transfusions in order to undergo surgery to remove the ‘fibroid’ after the bleeding returned in October 2022, where finally the mass was discovered.
On February 8, 2023, she finally had an outpatient biopsy where her cancer was discovered after a doctor was concerned and checked her cervix – which was not visible behind the mass.
She said the diagnosis didn’t ‘devastate’ her but she was in pain throughout treatment.
Pettway gave no further updates on her cancer after this and the post has since been flooded with condolences over her death.
