YouTuber spread positivity in fight against cancer
TIFFANY CHEUNG 1992 – 2024
Tiffany Cheung, a 32-year-old Hong Kong YouTuber who documented her journey fighting cancer, died last month, according to her family.
“Thank you all for your support. Tiffany’s condition had earlier deteriorated and in March she passed away peacefully,” Cheung’s family wrote on her Instagram account.
A funeral for Cheung, who had appeared on television shows sharing her battle against cancer, would be held on Saturday afternoon at a church. Members of the public can join the session online via Zoom.
Cheung was diagnosed with cervical cancer at age 27. Despite electrotherapy and chemotherapy, the cancer cells in her body spread quickly over two years.
In early 2021, Cheung was told she only had a few months left unless she undertook more strenuous therapies. That treatment would extend her life by a year, but she would lose her appetite and energy, she said. She chose ultimately to maintain her quality of life and live with the disease, turning instead to Chinese medicine and natural therapy.
“If my disease could not be cured at all, why should I spend a whole year living a life of low quality, and not enjoy the last few months alive?” she said in her first YouTube video in September 2021, which was filmed after she outlived her doctor’s prediction.
Cheung said she went down the YouTube path to document the last moments of her life, out of a simple wish to share positive energy and encourage others.
“I was very lucky. I lived like a normal person for the past seven months. I played sports, went hiking, did what I like, and I even went to work … I enjoyed every day of my life. Another day alive, another day of victory,” she said.
Cheung made 21 videos to share her journey of undergoing therapy and enjoying the last days of her life. She inspired many of her followers and was widely interviewed by local media.
Some highlights included her living funeral that was featured in a ViuTV programme two years ago, in which she documented the key moments of her life in an exhibition, hoping to help her friends and family cope with the loss.
In 2023, she travelled 17 times, half of which were for therapy and the rest for holidays.
On one trip to Chiang Mai in Thailand with a few terminally ill cancer patients and survivors, she endured chronic pain that affected her mobility and left her relying on a walking stick or wheelchair. The story was documented on a YouTube show and was widely circulated online.
She last updated her social media on January 1, recapping the challenging year of 2023 during which she underwent one operation, 10 sessions of electrotherapy, six chemotherapy sessions, six immunotherapy sessions, and many more check-ups.
“I finally made it to 2024, battered and bruised, and at a pace of ‘three steps forward then four steps back’,” she wrote.
In her last YouTube video released in November, she said her cancer cells had spread further and she struggled to cope with the electrotherapy necessary to control the spread. She then flew to the United States for a new therapy, after her condition stabilised briefly. “Cancer patients can only prepare for the worst and hope for the best … all I can do is face it positively,” she said.