Maddy Baloy, TikToker with Terminal Cancer, Dead at 26 [Video]

Maddy Baloy, a TikToker who documented her life with terminal cancer, has died. She was 26.

“Madison passed away peacefully last night,” fiancé Louis Risher tells PEOPLE in a statement on Thursday, May 2, adding that she was “surrounded with love.”

“She is so special,” Risher says. “I turned 27 yesterday, actually. I was holding her hand all day and that’s all I needed.”

Baloy, whose candid confessions touched a cord with the millions of people who watched her videos on TikTok, began experiencing stomach issues in the summer of 2022, she told PEOPLE earlier this year. She spent more than a year changing her diet in hopes of solving the problem, but on Feb. 22, 2023, she repeatedly vomited blood and began experiencing sensory issues. 

Initially, Baloy believed she had contracted “either a worm” or a stomach virus from one of her Kindergarten students at Shore Acres Elementary in Florida.

But her fiancé urged …