Jessica Pettway, a 36-year-old beauty influencer known for her hair tutorials on YouTube, passed away on March 11 in a hospice facility in her hometown, Georgia after battling cervical cancer. Pettway, who leaves behind two kids and a husband, is considered one of the original YouTube influencers. After being misdiagnosed with fibroids for seven months, Pettway was hospitalized for extreme bleeding and abdominal pain that she referred to as “laborlike.” She was finally referred to an oncologist who diagnosed her with Stage 3 cervical cancer. (Black women are 41 percent more likely to develop cervical cancer than white women and are 75 percent more likely to die from it, according to the National Library of Medicine.) Pettway’s misdiagnosis is an unfortunate reminder of the countless ways the health-care system fails patients.
Pettway wrote in an Instagram post that in July 2022 her husband found her unresponsive. When she was rushed to the hospital, doctors told her that her extreme loss of blood was “due to ‘fibroids’” and that it was “normal and common.” Her bleeding and pain persisted. It wasn’t until she went into the hospital for a biopsy, seven months later, that she saw a doctor who was the “first to show some concern,” as Pettway put it. Upon examining Pettway, the doctor quickly noticed she couldn’t see her cervix because a huge mass was blocking it. She referred Pettway to the oncologist, who diagnosed her a week later.
“Anytime you’re dealing with an illness, it not only affects you, but it also changes the lives of those closest to you,” Pettway wrote in an Instagram post from August 4, 2023. “Being wheeled into the ambulance and waving bye to my kids, only to see them crying for their mommy to stay home, broke me. And watching my husband break down in tears, was rough.” That was her second-to-last post on the platform. Her last one came a day later, when she shared that she “needed a change of scenery” and had been in Georgia visiting her family.
The comment section on that post is now filled with messages from her community of fans grieving her loss. “This is beyond heartbreaking. You deserve so much better from our healthcare system. My prayers go out to your family,” one supporter said.
