A brave cancer patient has passed away days after opening up about the prospect of dying in an emotional blog post in which he urged readers to enjoy life to the fullest.
31-year-old Elliot Dallen from London, UK, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer known as adrenal cortical carcinoma two years ago after doctors discovered a large tumor adjacent to his adrenal gland.
In recent months, the young man became very vocal about his illness and his degrading health as he encouraged the readers of his texts to live their lives to the fullest.
In a blog post titled The Switch and Call to Arms, which was shared on the internet on August 28, Dallen came clean about the suffering that his body had been through during the recent months.
“After pinning my hopes on this idea for so long, it took just 10 days for it to batter me,” the 31-year-old said of the prospect of keeping cancer at bay with the help of medications and treatments.
“My days involved moving from my room to the sofa, feeling like I had flu and the mental fog that so often accompanies chemotherapy.
“And almost immediately I realized I just couldn’t do it. Life for me is about living, not just clocking up the years.”
As the young man added, the drugs trial caused him to become “a shell of who” he was and that’s when he realized that “life is for living.”
“The human body is a wonderful thing. You only appreciate this when it starts to fail you and physically completing your waking hours becomes a 12-hour long struggle,” Dallen wrote in his post. “A life, if well lived, is long enough,” he stated.
Following just days after his viral post, Dallen’s sister Annabel revealed that her brother had died on Monday.
On the same day, his tear-jerking piece detailing his struggles with the disease was published by the Guardian. While the 31-year-old didn’t get the chance to read the article, his sister revealed that her brother was very happy with the response his blog post had generated.
“Because of the timing of things, it meant that people from across the world were wishing Elliot well as he was going, which is a quite a nice thing to think,” Annabel told the Guardian.
“He definitely smiled and while he didn’t have the energy that he had when the first article appeared, which really gave him a special buzz and excitement, you could tell there was a sparkle in his eye.”
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