A teacher dying of cervical cancer says Jersey Shore star Snooki's diagnosis serves as a warning to women their age - and shares the secret signs to look for. Carly Scott, 38, was diagnosed with stage three cancer last May 2025 after initially being told her flu symptoms were likely caused by the menopause.

Reality star Nicole Polizzi, commonly known by her nickname, revealed she had been diagnosed with stage one cervical cancer last Friday after having "abnormal" pap smear results for "three or four years". Carly - from Newcastle - says Snooki, also 38, shows how women their age often "slip through the net" as they narrowly missed the window for universal HPV vaccines.

“It came back stage one cervical cancer called adenocarcinoma,” Polizzi said in a video posted to TikTok. “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!”

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She added: “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. 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 one and it’s curable.”

Carly was a year older than the cut-off for a free HPV vaccine and was refused the jab privately as medics assumed she was sexually active aged 15. She now insists the vaccine could have saved her life.

Carly said: "I think it’s sad. There are a lot of girls our age that slip through the net. In some countries the vaccine has eradicated cervical cancer or very close to it. For women older than us, all the pressure was on getting your checks and getting your smears, whereas nowadays we’re in this middle ground where we’ve been relying on vaccines but the awareness has dropped off a bit there with the smears."

She added that many women in their late 30s had their symptoms dismissed as signs of the menopause. She had been struggling with fatigue but put it down to her busy life. Carly said: "When I first went (to doctors), I was sent away. They thought it was the menopause or period-related.

"At our age, there are symptoms you can put to one side. I was really, really tired all the time and obviously, I know lots of women have got full-time jobs and families to look after, so it's just seen as normal."

Carly did not undergo regular smear tests because of PTSD caused by childhood events - and believes adjustments could have saved her life. She continued: "Every woman’s aware of the smear test but also I want to raise a bit more awareness for those who can’t go, like physically and mentally disabled women or me who had PTSD and physically couldn’t do it.

"My GP should have flagged that I’ve got a mental health issue and referred me to the hospital."

Since Snooki's cancer is stage one, figures suggest she has a 90 per cent chance of survival. "At stage three, it’s a nosedive and it’s like 12 per cent", Carly explained. "But I would try not to pay attention to the statistics because they’re very out of date now."

The star said she would receive a PET scan to check if the cancer had spread - and probably a hysterectomy to remove her uterus and cervix and avoid chemotherapy and radiation. Cervical cancer is a slow-growing cancer which occurs in the cervix and is most often caused by HPV infections.

Most sufferers have no early symptoms but abnormal vaginal bleeding and pelvic pain are common later signs. Carly is fundraising for a £30,000 specialist treatment in Germany called trans arterial chemoembolization (TACE) - which uses a catheter to delivery chemotherapy direct to the tumour.

She previously said of her diagnosis: "It just seemed to be that I had a life then 10 seconds later I was losing my hair. They said I had a big tumour. When I woke up from the biopsy, they thought it was in my bladder, bowel and cervix and the doctor said, 'I’m sorry, I wish I’d met you 10 years ago - you’ve got cancer, get your stuff in order.'

"When I got my scans a week later it wasn’t in bladder and bowel anymore - I was really lucky, but my tumour was so big that they thought it was. I knew it wasn’t gone - I didn’t think it had spread to my lungs, and it was a shock but not as big a shock as expected as I was still getting some symptoms that I had just before I was diagnosed."

You can donate to Carly's fundraiser here - www.gofundme.com/f/supporting-carly-scott-in-her-fight-against-cancer