In social media images, a student at the New Zealand College looked like a photo of youth and health – but as she discovered in Tiktok, a deadly disease was hiding under the surface.
Last year, Dominique McSHIN was an average third-year psychology student at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, coming home from a trip to Asia and looking forward to celebrating her 21st birthday.
She began to experience extreme fatigue, struggling to stay awake in her classes and often needed to take nap throughout the day, despite getting a full night of sleep.
On May 3, 2024, she posted a video on Tiktok that revealed that she would be diagnosed with incurable colorectal cancer.
“I wanted to start this tiktok because basically what I wanted to do in my life was to help people,” she said in the video.
She had planned to continue studying clinical psychology – before doctors gave her only one to five years to live.
She went on to say that she had to leave the school in order to begin treatment of chemotherapy, which she described as “intense”.
“I’ve had a chemotherapy so far and I’ve had a few really bad days,” she said. But she hopes she can still fulfill her goal to help people by sharing her story and raising awareness.
“I wanted to make a change somewhat and line something behind and I hope to help people,” she said. “And I know that cancer is becoming much more common in the colon, like the youth.”
Recent studies have documented a significant increase in colorectal cancer among young adults. A 2023 report by the American Cancer Society stated that 20% of colorectal cancer diagnoses in 2019 were in patients under 55, approximately double the rate in 1995.
“I wanted to finally share my symptoms and I like to raise consciousness only so that other people will hope to catch it faster in front of me, because it absorbs,” she added.
In May, she told New Zealand Herald that, in addition to fatigue, some of her symptoms included constipation, diarrhea, stomach pain, blood on her bench and loss of appetite.
McSHIN’s video received over 5 million views, with many commentators sharing messages of hope and support.
“I moved to phase 4 of the colon cancer, I told him that I was probably for 2 years to live. That was 2002,” one viewer wrote.
“My father had colon cancer in the late 1980s. They gave him 18 months to live,” commented another viewer. “He died in 76 years old in 2015. Fight with everything you have, heart and don’t give up.”
McSHIN, which has nearly 200,000 followers in Tiktok, has often posted updates about her cancer journey.
“I still can’t understand how I can look so good and healthy, but be so sick in the point that I have a terminal illness?!” She wrote in a January post. “How is my illness passed at the point of curability? Mathematics is not math in my head yet … I’m not sure if it will ever happen. “
At the end of last month, she shared a devastating news: the cancer had spread to the lungs and she was given less than a year to live.
“After receiving only six weeks of chemotherapy to give my body the time to recover, on the contrary I have been overloaded by severe pain and fatigue. These symptoms led to an early scan, which showed that my cancer not only It has grown, but it has also spread to the lungs, ”she said.
“Oncologists have now estimated that I have less than a year left, and it is likely to have been for months.
“It came much faster from whoever anticipated, and the reality is pressing,” she continued. “I had hoped for many more years, but now that seems to be unable to be reached.”
She said she was “deeply broken in her heart”, but encouraged friends to manage to spend time with her – and everyone would pray.
On Valentine’s Day, she posted a video thanking her supporters, who have collected nearly $ 20,000 through a donation page to help her pay for her medical expenses.
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Image Source : nypost.com