Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi has been diagnosed with Stage 1 cervical cancer, she said Friday.
The 38-year-old “Jersey Shore” star shared her diagnosis in a TikTok following a doctor’s appointment where she got the results of her cone biopsy.
“It came back Stage 1 cervical cancer called adenocarcinoma,” she said. “And obviously not the news I’ve been hoping for, but also not the worst news just because they caught it so early. Thank freaking God!”
Sharing that she is still learning about her next steps, Polizzi urged women to get their routine Pap smears.
“I’m 38 years old and I’ve been struggling with abnormal Pap smears for three or four years now, and now look at me,” she continued. “Instead of putting it off because I didn’t want to go, because I was hurt and scared, I just went and did it. And it was there, cancer is in there but it’s Stage 1 and it’s curable.”
The mom of three shared that after her cone biopsy, which is when abnormal tissue is removed from the cervix for testing, doctors “took out what was, like, the tumor, the cancer that was in there, but then around it was clear.”
“So there were no cancer cells on that, which means it didn’t go up into the cervix, which is a good thing,” she continued, noting that there is still a chance the cancer could spread in her body.
Her next steps, she said, would be a PET scan and undergo a hysterectomy after her oncologist said the other options were chemotherapy or radiation.
“Obviously, I think the smart choice here is the hysterectomy. I’ll still keep my ovaries, which is a good sign,” she said. “But yeah, gotta get the cervix and uterus out... It all depends on the PET scan.”
Polizzi said that 2026 is not panning out how she’d like it to, adding, “But also, it could be worse.”
“So even though it’s not the news that I wanted to get, I still have to do further things to get rid of this,” she said. “I just feel like it’s very common in women.”
According to the American Cancer Society, the incidence of cervical cancer has been increasing in women in their 30s and early 40s, even while it’s decreased for women in their 20s.
Polizzi first shared news of doctors finding cancerous cells on her cervix in a Jan. 20 TikTok. This came after she underwent a colposcopy and biopsy and the results came back abnormal.
What is Cervical Cancer and the Symptoms?
Cervical cancer is a growth of cells that starts in the cervix, per Mayo Clinic. Various strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), a common inflection that’s passed through sexual contact, can also cause most cervical cancers.
When exposed to HPV, the body’s immune system typically prevents the virus from doing harm. However, the virus may survive for years in a small percentage of people, contributing to the process that causes some cervical cells to become cancer cells.
Cervical cancer is highly preventable in part to the HPV vaccine and routine screening can find the cancer early, including the HPV test and the Pap smear.
Symptoms of advanced cervical cancer, include abnormal vaginal bleeding, pain and discharge.
