SYDNEY TOWLE'S SPECIAL : SOCIAL MEDIA HONOURS PRECIS

Sydney Towle [ 1999-2028 ] lived with cancer on social media. She was a social media memoirist and mixed anguish, optimism and unabashed wanderlust as she challenged TikTok viewers to reconsider how a cancer patient should look and live, died last Wednesday.

Her death, from complications of metastatic bile duct cancer was announced on her social media channels. Days earlier, her family said she had entered hospice care.

Inn 2013, Ms. Towle, a recent graduate of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, was living in Los Angeles - working at a remote-office marketing job, surfing and posting bikini selfies and dance-trend videos online - when a bulge and a burning sensation in her belly, landed her in urgent care.

Soon after, she was diagnosed with cholangio carcinoma, a rare cancer of the bile ducts.

Ms. Towle turned her new life as a young woman with cancer into content. For an audience that grew to more than a million followers, she created videos showing herself hiking in Spain, sharing her loneliness and, with her mother, wrapping her head in ice packs to help prevent hair loss from chemotherapy.

Meshing the realities of a deadly disease with a thirst for life, she brought her large following with her as she juggled illness and enriching experiences.

She had surgery to remove her gall bladder and part of her liver - and once she got the OK from a doctor, she took off for a solo adventure in Europe. Through it all, she recorded and posted.

!WOW! thanks Katherine Bosman.