TikTok star Leah Smith died on Monday, March 11, following a four-year bone cancer battle. She was 22.
“I’m sad to say that she passed away today around half-eleven this morning,” Smith’s boyfriend, Andrew, said in a TikTok video shared via her official page on Monday. “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.”
He added: “We’ll all miss Leah, but we’ll make sure we never forget her. We’ll never let Leah be forgotten.”
Smith gained fame on social media for documenting her battle with Ewing Sarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer that usually affects children and young adults. The disease primarily spreads through the long bones and soft tissue, according to John Hopkins Medicine. The symptoms include “pain, swelling and fever.”
Smith, who resided in Liverpool, England, was open with her more than 500,000 TikTok followers about her ups and downs with the illness, which reached stage 4 before her death.
In 2020, she revealed that after complaining about a backache for 10 months she lost all feeling in her left leg. That was when she was diagnosed with the cancer.
In January, Smith told her followers that she was “not well again” and the following month she was hospitalized. “I can’t even move to go to the toilet or anything because I’m in that much pain,” she said in a February 3 video. “I’m just stuck sitting like this.”
One week later, the content creator confirmed that the cancer had spread and her tumors had grown. “They have changed my pain meds finally … my doctor said just worry about the pain for now but this feels like the [beginning] of the end knowing it will likely never go,” Smith confessed in the February 8 clip.
Smith’s condition continued to get worse throughout February, which she relayed to her followers in a separate video. “All the pain meds aren’t working so they really just want to get me to a comfortable state as much as possible,” she shared on February 18, noting it might be the “end [of] the journey.”
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She confessed at the time that she was “so scared” and didn’t “want to die yet.” Smith’s TikTok account was eventually taken over by her family and close friend Vikki.
“We are all so truly heartbroken without Leah, but as Andrew said we will never forget her,” Vikki wrote via a tribute on Smith’s TikTok page on Tuesday, March 12. “This isn’t goodbye just a goodnight, rest peacefully in that beautiful sunflower field and I’ll see you again one day.”
Fans mourned the loss as well, with one user writing in the comments section, “The whole world is heartbroken 💔.” A second follower replied, “Leah smith💛 the most beautiful angel up there 🌻 keep shining gorgeous xx.”
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