Leah Smith, TikTok star who documented rare cancer on social media, dead at 22

Leah Smith, a TikTok star who used the social media platform to document her battle after she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, died Monday. She was 22.

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Smith, from Liverpool, England, died from stage 4 Ewing sarcoma, a form of bone cancer that normally affects children, her boyfriend, Andrew Moore, announced in a video posted on Smith’s TikTok page, according to the BBC.

“I’m sad to say that she passed away today around half-eleven this morning,” Moore said in the video. “I just want to say thank you to everyone. All your comments did help, like, she did actually read all of them. Anyone who said anything nice ever, it means more than you realize.”

According to the Johns Hopkins Medicine website, Ewing sarcoma is mostly found in a person’s hip bones, ribs, femur, tibia or humerus.

Smith was first diagnosed with cancer after she lost feeling in one of her legs, Deadline reported.

She had more than 500,000 followers on TikTok, and her videos received millions of views, according to the BBC.

Smith said she wanted people viewing her videos to see “my life living with cancer -- the ups and downs of it.”

On Feb. 8, Smith updated her viewers, telling them, “I had an idea but when (you’re) told it still hurts so yes the cancer has spread and yes the tumors have grown.”

Smith posted another video on Feb. 18, writing that things were dire.

“Update that I didn’t think I ever wanted to do,” she wrote. “The doctors have said there’s no point trying to give me more antibiotics and fluids because it just isn’t working anymore. All the pain meds aren’t working so they really just want to get me to a comfortable state as much as possible.

“Idk what this means for me if this is the end of the journey but all my family have came around and I am just going to act like I’m good and great because quite frankly I am so so scared. I don’t want to die yet. I’m sorry.”

“We’ll all miss Leah, but we’ll make sure that we never forget her,” Moore said in the video he posted. “I want to see everyone speaking about Leah, how amazing she is and how much she helped everyone. We’ll never let Leah be forgotten.”

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