The creator documented her battle with rare bile duct cancer, inspiring more than a million followers online<\/p>\n
Sydney Towle, a TikTok creator who shared her battle with stage 4 cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer, with over a million online followers, has died at age 26, her family announced on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Towle gained fame for her posts about her life as a spirited young woman who encouraged her TikTok followers to rethink how a cancer patient might look and live.<\/p>\n
Towle\u2019s family announced her death, nearly three years after she was first diagnosed, via Instagram: \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 Earlier this week, her family said that she had entered hospice care.<\/p>\n
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
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
\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
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 mom 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
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. \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
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
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
\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.<\/p>\n
After her death was announced on Thursday, her mother and brother Austin Towle\u2019s TikTok video update was flooded with messages of condolence.<\/p>\n