{"id":585811,"date":"2026-08-07T08:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T08:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/585811\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T08:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T08:46:09","slug":"tiktok-creator-sydney-towle-who-shared-cancer-journey-dies-aged-26-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/585811\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok creator Sydney Towle, who shared cancer journey, dies aged 26 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sydney Towle, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/tiktok\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/tiktok\">TikTok <\/a>creator who shared her treatment for bile duct cancer with over a million online followers, has died at age 26, her family announced on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Towle gained fame for her posts about her life as a young woman who encouraged her TikTok followers to rethink how a cancer patient might look and live.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Towle\u2019s family announced her death, nearly three years after she was first diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/Dbsrz_UJDih\/?hl=en\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/Dbsrz_UJDih\/?hl=en\">via Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cWe will always love you so much Sydney,\u201d the caption read. \u201cI am so proud of how hard you fought. I love you.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Earlier this week, her family said that she had entered hospice care.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In 2023, Towle was living in Los Angeles after graduating from Dartmouth College, and working at a remote-office marketing job, surfing and posting bikini selfies and dance trend videos online.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A bulge and burning sensation in her abdomen landed her in urgent care and she later was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer most often diagnosed in adults over age 50.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThe doctor thought I had a hernia, but he was like, \u2018I\u2019ll send you in for an ultrasound, just in case,\u2019\u201d Towle told Today in 2024. \u201cI got an ultrasound, and it showed a solid mass.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Towle turned her medical ordeal as a young woman with cancer into content, creating videos of a hike in Spain during a solo adventure in Europe, her mother wrapping her head in ice packs to help combat hair loss from cancer treatments, and the day-to-day of her struggle balanced with gratitude and hope.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">She blended her life as a cancer patient with lifestyle posts and faced online trolls who doubted the reality of her condition and online persona. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cI\u2019m not a television show that you\u2019re watching, which I think people have a really hard time understanding,\u201d she told the New York Times in a 2025 front-page profile. \u201cI\u2019m not a fake character. I\u2019m a person.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In a TikTok posted last year Towle danced in her apartment advising her fans: \u201cGo get a pint of Ben and Jerry\u2019s, watch your favorite movie, remember that life is good and bad things happen sometimes but that doesn\u2019t make it a bad life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Melinda Bachini, of the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation, told the Times that Towle\u2019s role as an influencer had persuaded her audience to reconsider living with a serious illness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cSyd had a keen sense of how sharing her life could help others, and she used that to promote understanding of young adults facing cancer, the importance of research funding and the beauty of living life in the moment,\u201d she said. &#8211; Guardian<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney Towle, a TikTok creator who shared her treatment for bile duct cancer with over a million online&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,6116],"class_list":["post-585811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}