Fans are mourning the passing of well-known beauty and lifestyle influencer Jessica Pettway, who died on March 11 after a battle with stage 3 cervical cancer.
The 36-year-old with over 153,000 Instagram followers and 229,000 YouTube subscribers shared her diagnosis with followers in a July 2023 Instagram post.
But even more heartbreaking than her diagnosis, is the fact that doctors initially misdiagnosed her. In her post, Pettway revealed that after experiencing symptoms like intense vaginal bleeding and extreme fatigue, doctors told her she had uterine fibroids – benign tumors that can appear in a woman’s uterus during her childbearing years.
Fibroids are common among African American women. According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly 50 percent of Black women will have them by age 35. The number jumps to 80 percent of women will have them by age by age 50 – compared to 70 percent of white women.
But after being hospitalized due to non-stop excessive bleeding, a biopsy revealed that what doctors thought was fibroids was actually cervical cancer, Pettway explained on Instagram.
Unfortunately, women and minorities are 20 to 30 percent more likely to experience medical misdiagnosis than white men, according to David Newman-Toker, a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine – a problem fans of Pettway believe must be stopped.
“so sorry they failed you, please rest peacefully!! My God 💔 please this broken system for black women Lord!! This has got to stop,” wrote one person in the comments of an image of Pettway and her family on Instagram.
Pettway leaves behind her husband of twelve years and their two children, Kailee, 10, and Zoi Lee, 3.
Pettway’s sister Reyni Brown, who called her “the most amazing, strong, confident” woman she had ever met, shared how she is dealing with her sister’s passing in an Instagram post, according to E! Online.
“It’s my birthday today, and the only thing I could ever wish for is for God to bring you back on this earth. I lost my beautiful big sister 2 days ago, and my heart has never felt pain like this,” she wrote.