“Married at First Sight” star Jamie Otis has received some scary news about her health, and is using her extensive platform — she has nearly 500,000 Instagram followers — to help spread cancer awareness.
The “Bachelor” alum has revealed to her supporters that she has a high-risk strain of a common virus called human papillomavirus (HPV). It showed cervical dysplasia, which can be a sign of cancer.
“I got the call today saying that my doc did see dysplasia & since I’m pregnant, we will have to wait to biopsy my cervix until after I have the baby,” she wrote.
Otis and Hehner are currently expecting their second child.
Cervical dysplasia does not necessary indicate cancer, according to the Mayo Clinic, but simply means that abnormal cells were spotted on the cervix. However, HPV can lead to cervical cancer as well as several other cancers, and is an incredibly common sexually transmitted disease.
Otis and Hehner met on the set of “Married at First Sight” in 2014, and have been together ever since. They had their first child in 2017, and are expecting their second in May 2020.
Celebrities Advocating for HPV Awareness
“Desperate Housewives” actor Marcia Cross, an anal cancer survivor, has also been speaking up about the importance of HPV awareness. Cross said that her cancer, as well as her husband’s throat cancer, were both caused by HPV and, in the past year, she’s been vocal about spreading awareness that HPV can cause multiple cancers, and that there is a vaccine that can prevent this.
Actor and advocate Marcia Cross at the People v. Cancer event from The Atlantic Live in collaboration with SurvivorNet. Photo credit: Kristoffer Tripplaar / The Atlantic Live
During an interview at last month’s People v. Cancer conference from the Atlantic Live in association with SurvivorNet, Cross said that people in her generation (the actress is 57) may not be aware of the risks of HPV, especially since the vaccine was not introduced until 2006.
“There are generations — my generation, the generation before me, maybe — that don’t know about HPV,” Cross said. “And the reasons that’s a problem in my eyes is that HPV is on the rise in post-menopausal women, and that’s precisely when they’re backing off from pap smears. So I think we need to educate that population that they need to get digital rectal exams, and they need to take their symptoms very seriously if they think they have a hemorrhoid.”
Most of the time, the infection goes away on its own and doesn't cause any symptoms. But other times, when a person contracts a specific "high-risk" strain of HPV, their body may have more difficulty shaking the virus, which can linger and eventually lead to cancer. The vaccine protects against the types of HPV that are most likely to cause cervical cancers, as well as cancers of the vulva, vagina, anus and orophaynx.
The CDC recommends children be given the vaccine around age 11 or 12.
