The tragic story of how teen TikTok star Grace Phelan documented her terminal cancer as tributes pour in
Phelan, 19, captured hearts across social media as she bravely documented her battle with a grade 4 malignant brain tumor.
She shared intimate moments of her fight right up until her final days.
The inspiring influencer's family announced her heartbreaking death on Friday, May 23, just one week after she posted a gut-wrenching final update about her deteriorating condition.
'Things haven't been good. My tumor grew and it's in the area where I can't breathe and it can't be operated,' she said. 'So, I just want to say thank you for all the prayers. It would take a miracle, but I'm not giving up yet. If you keep praying for me, I think that I'll make it.'
'So we're just going to hope and pray that I get better soon... so yeah, just keep me in your prayers. It will take a miracle, but thank you all.'
The teenager's tragic story began last summer when she started experiencing alarming symptoms just days before she was set to begin college.
Things got more concerning when she developed numbness on one side of her face and in her leg.
This led to the devastating news.
An MRI scan revealed a lesion on her brain, and a subsequent brain biopsy confirmed her worst fears - she had been diagnosed with a glioma, a aggressive type of brain tumor.
'I started losing my balance,' she said in one video. 'I started having vision problems in my left eye, my numbness in my face and on my leg is still here. My speech started to seem weird. My head's very foggy.'
That's when the nightmare began.
She announced her cancer diagnosis in a September 2024 TikTok video.
'This is definitely the hardest news I've ever received. By all means, this is not easy. Just going to trust in the Lord and try and keep pushing forward.'
Throughout her heartbreaking journey, the brave teenager gave her followers a close look into her battle.
She shared updates about radiation therapy and her worsening symptoms, which included breathing problems and dizziness.
In her final, heart-wrenching video, Phelan spoke candidly about how the disease had destroyed her body.
'I don't see very well. I don't walk or shower alone, or eat alone,' she added 'My whole right side is numb... that's pretty much where we're at,' she continued in part. 'I'm not doing cancer pills right now, there isn't [sic] options for me.'
Despite her declining health, the teenager maintained her unwavering faith and gratitude for her supporters right until the end.
Her family announced her death in a message posted to her social media accounts.
'It is with great sadness to announce that our beautiful daughter, Anna Grace Phelan, went home to be with her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.'
'So many of you have followed her journey through a difficult battle with cancer and bore witness to her powerful testimony of faith,' the statement continued.
'Thank you for the countless thousands of prayers for healing and peace. May we all rejoice with the assurance that she is in Heaven now, and she has been healed.'
Per her obituary, Phelan's funeral will be held Thursday at Galilee Christian Church in Jackson County, Georgia, with burial to follow at the church's cemetery.
A GoFundMe campaign launched for Phelan after her diagnosis has raised more than $65,000.
She is survived by her parents, William 'Buddy' Phelan and Nadine Phelan, her brother Harper David Phelan, and extended family.
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When the result was read out, I burst out crying – which isn't like me at all.' Richard Tingey and his daughter Heidi photographed near his wife Barbara's woodland burial grave in Suffolk Barbara Tingey died of bowel cancer at the age of 76, in July 2023. She was diagnosed two years earlier, six months after her daughter Heidi's husband John had died of the same disease. A former deputy headteacher at a secondary school in Norfolk, Tingey had taught chemistry since the 1960s. After taking early retirement, she and her husband Richard went on holidays, mostly to France, and spent time with family: Heidi, their other daughter Katie, and their three grandchildren. 'She was so determined to stay alive and beat the odds,' Heidi says. Her mother had three rounds of chemotherapy – 'Then the treatment stopped working.' From early 2023, her condition deteriorated rapidly. Although her family didn't know it at the time, Tingey decided to stockpile pain medication. 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In February, with mounting health issues, he was told he probably had one year to live. 'This may well be my last July. Try getting your head around that,' he says. He saw running the London marathon this past April as a 'last chance' and completed it in just under eight hours (although, as a former ultramarathon runner, he admits he 'found it difficult to accept any praise for the achievement'). Since diagnosis, Dye has also raised more than £40,000 (and counting) for Macmillan Cancer Support, receiving an MBE at the end of last year for his efforts. Less than a month after the marathon, Dye was taken to hospital with a near-fatal pulmonary embolism. He is less and less mobile, which, 'as someone formerly so active, is very hard to deal with', and has decided to take early retirement this summer, after being signed off work sick for most of the past two years. He hopes soon to be able to go on a long-discussed canal holiday with a small group of friends. 'It's just a case of constantly reassessing expectations based on what my body can do and getting the most out of every day, week, month, whatever timescale it is.' It's important for Dye to emphasise how much he wants to keep living while also supporting assisted dying. 'The notion of 'assisted suicide' really, really gets to me, because if there's anything I'm not, it's suicidal,' he says. He has in the past struggled with suicidal ideation but since getting his diagnosis 'it's been the total opposite … That intent to keep going is not, for me, mutually exclusive with the concept of assisted dying at the point where there isn't any light at the end of the tunnel.' Dye and his brother Jon running this year's London Marathon (top) and receiving his MBE at Windsor Castle in March In written evidence submitted to parliament, Dye described the passage of the assisted dying bill as his 'dying wish'. Now, he says, he 'won't quite believe it's real until it becomes law. I don't speak for all dying people, but I know a change in the law would bring me the greatest comfort as I try to settle into my last weeks and months.' Josh Cook photographed at home in Huddersfield 'I grew up knowing I was at risk of Huntington's and that my mum had it,' says Josh Cook, a 34-year-old rugby coach from Huddersfield. Children have a 50/50 chance of inheriting the gene that causes the fatal neurodegenerative disorder. The disease – which shares symptoms with Parkinson's, dementia and ALS – goes back generations in Cook's family. At 18, he learned he had the gene, too. 'We've just been unlucky at every coin toss, but I'm not going to have children, so it will stop there,' he says. Cook's mum, Lisa, took her own life last year at the age of 57. Her symptoms had begun several years earlier: slurring of speech, involuntary muscle movements, loss of balance. The prognosis was unpredictable; patients usually live for 10-30 years after symptom onset. 'I knew she would never go through with the illness,' Cook says. 'My mum watched my great-grandma go through every stage of it at home. One thing that sticks with me was that Mum saw her wear a hole through the carpet in front of her chair from twitching her legs. My mum didn't want that for herself.' Cook with his mum at a wedding in 1993 (above, top right) and after she gained her degree from the University of London (above, right bottom). His mum had long been a campaigner for assisted dying – she is seen (above left, back right) delivering a petition to No 10 with others in 2002 Cook, who so far hasn't had any symptoms, believes he would make the same decision as his mother. That's why a change in the law is so important to him: 'So that people can stop the generational trauma.' He wouldn't qualify for assisted dying under the law currently being proposed, as in the final stages of Huntington's mental competency is affected. But he is hopeful that the law would give people with this disease a basis to go to court and express their wishes in advance. 'We are still afraid of death in this country,' he says. 'For a very small group of us, this is something we think about because we have to. The end of my life is going to matter to me as much as the rest of it.' Mick Murray and Carol Taylor photographed in the Peak District close to the wall where their friend Bob Cole first noticed he was out of breath walking uphill – which was unusual as he was a mountaineer A married couple living in Derbyshire, Mick Murray and Carol Taylor have spent the past decade campaigning for assisted dying in memory of their longtime friends, husband and wife Bob Cole and Ann Hall. In 2013 Hall, a social worker and activist, was diagnosed with a rare terminal neurological condition called progressive supranuclear palsy. Quickly deteriorating, she decided to travel to Dignitas while she was still able in February 2014 – she was 68. Just over a year later Cole, a former town councillor, learned he had mesothelioma, an aggressive form of lung cancer likely caused by him working with asbestos as an apprentice carpenter in his teens. In August 2015, he, too, made the journey to Dignitas, aged 68. 'They actually had a choice over the way that they died, and they wanted to die in a way that was dignified,' says Taylor. Murray adds: 'The opponents call it assisted suicide. But the root of suicide is loneliness, despair and depression. This is due to illness. It was almost life-affirming, being there for the actual event. It was really sad, but it certainly wasn't suicide.' The Sun's coverage of Cole's death at Dignitas in 2015, which he had invited the newspaper to report on. He was 68 But Murray and Taylor are adamant people shouldn't have to go to Dignitas. 'Bob and Ann didn't have any children. They didn't have any parents alive. When you've got family, making that decision, to go and die before you need to, is more difficult,' says Taylor. And beside the often-prohibitive cost, there are bureaucratic challenges, because medical services don't always cooperate in providing the necessary records. 'No ill person could navigate this system, so other people have to navigate it for them. And in so doing, you become complicit,' says Murray. On the prospect of the law changing in the not-too-distant future, Taylor says: 'It's got to be time, hasn't it?' Pauline McLeod, photographed at her home near York 'He was very anxious about what was going to happen to him,' says Pauline McLeod, whose husband, Ian, died of motor neurone disease at the age of 76 in 2023. Life expectancy for someone with MND sufferer is typically one to five years – McLeod had been diagnosed two years earlier. Over the course of the disease, McLeod lost his mobility and his speech and experienced difficulties with swallowing and breathing. 'Not having control was terrifying for him,' Pauline says. Pauline is pictured here in the home she and Ian, a management consultant, shared in North Yorkshire. But they spent a lot of time travelling as well – to Singapore, Indonesia, Australia. 'He had a very, very full life: travelled a lot, liked fast cars and was pretty fearless, really,' Pauline recalls. 'And then the diagnosis was just so devastating – he couldn't cope with the restrictions that brought for him. He knew that all he had to look forward to was a steady decline.' McLeod would wake up at night with panic attacks that required sedation. An especially difficult milestone was selling their collection of classic cars. 'I caught him in the garage crying. They were his passion; he lost everything he cared about,' says Pauline. Photographs taken by McLeod (top) and a small replica Ferrari given to him (above) – he was obsessed with collecting cars but sold them before he died In June 2022, McLeod attempted to take his own life. Eventually, after he stopped eating and drinking, he was admitted to a hospice where he could die peacefully. 'We were very lucky that they took him, because it's not the same everywhere,' Pauline says. The prospect of legalised assisted dying would, she thinks, be a form of 'closure … nobody else has to go through what Ian and I had to go through'. Anil Douglas, photographed in Golders Hill park, Golders Green, London, where he used to visit with his father Anil is the son of Ian Douglas, who took his own life in February 2019, the day before his 60th birthday. Douglas was suffering from secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, having been diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease in the 1980s. While MS is incurable, it is not usually considered a terminal illness. However, Douglas's GP had confirmed that his condition was terminal due to the progressive weakening of his immune system. Largely paralysed and in increasing pain, he decided to end his own life while he was still physically able. In a letter to be read at his funeral, he wrote, 'This was not a cry for help, and I end my life not distraught or depressed, but as happy as I can be in the circumstances.' However, the circumstances of his death were 'deeply traumatic', says Anil, who found his father as he was dying. 'Nothing can prepare you for that experience of grief in real time, like watching a car crash unfold before your eyes.' It later became apparent that Douglas had already made two attempts on his life in the previous weeks. 'His death was a really lonely, dangerous one. He obviously couldn't tell any of us about his decision.' Anil as a baby with his dad Ian (top); with his sister Anjili, 34 (ahove), on Hampstead Heath near Kenwood House, where they used to take their dad in his wheelchair The trauma was compounded by a police investigation, which saw five police cars show up at the family home. Anil and his sister's phones and their father's electronic devices were confiscated, and the siblings later had to give formal interviews. The investigation 'hung over our heads for months'. Afterwards Anil, who also went through the death of his mother Reena from cancer in 2008, began to campaign for changes to the law. 'Bad deaths scar you for ever,' he says. 'Whereas the law currently being proposed would lead to so many more good deaths, where people have the chance to come to terms with the reality of their death.' Steve Gibson, photographed at Westway Coaches in south London, where he used to work Steve Gibson, a 67-year-old former coach driver from south London, was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) in January 2023. Timelines vary for the terminal illness, also known as ALS, but there is no cure or treatment. Gibson, who lives with his daughter Emma and two of his grandchildren, seems to be a slow progressor. But MND will take away his ability to walk, talk, eat and eventually breathe. He has noticed his already deep voice getting 'croakier' due to increased difficulty clearing his throat. As a sociable person, losing the ability to communicate is especially scary; he recently started using a voice-banking app suggested by the NHS. 'My big concern was: am I still going to sound like a south Londoner? And, secondly, can I swear? The answer to both was yes.' Life-extending options for MND include a feeding tube and a tracheostomy to assist breathing. 'Initially, I said, 'Yeah, I want everything', because you want to live for ever,' Gibson says. But he's since changed his mind. After 'a long discussion' with his neurologist, he signed a do not resuscitate order. He remembers taking care of his dad, who died from a different neurological disorder, in the last years of his life. 'My mum couldn't deal with it. Emotionally, it wrecks you. I don't want to be like that.' Gibson at Westway Coaches with Dave, his friend and former boss (top) and with his daughter Emma and granddaughter Nellie-Rose Gibson wishes he could afford to go to Dignitas, and hopes changes to the law will happen soon enough for him to benefit. He wants to be able to decide when to call it quits. 'I'm very happy with the life I've had. People ask if I've got any regrets. Well, yeah, maybe, but you can't do anything about it. So we move forward as we are. That's good enough for me.'
