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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.
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.
Towle’s family announced her death, nearly three years after she was first diagnosed, via Instagram: “We will always love you so much Sydney,” the caption read. “I am so proud of how hard you fought. I love you.” Earlier this week, her family said that she had entered hospice care.
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.
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.
“The doctor thought I had a hernia, but he was like, ‘I’ll send you in for an ultrasound, just in case,’” Towle told Today in 2024. “I got an ultrasound, and it showed a solid mass.”
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.
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. “I’m not a television show that you’re watching, which I think people have a really hard time understanding,” she told the New York Times in a 2025 front-page profile. “I’m not a fake character. I’m a person.”
In a TikTok posted last year Towle danced in her apartment advising her fans: “Go get a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, watch your favorite movie, remember that life is good and bad things happen sometimes but that doesn’t make it a bad life.”
Melinda Bachini, of the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation, told the Times that Towle’s role as an influencer had persuaded her audience to reconsider living with a serious illness.
“Syd 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,” she said.
After her death was announced on Thursday, her mother and brother Austin Towle’s TikTok video update was flooded with messages of condolence.
