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A popular influencer was recently diagnosed with stomach cancer after he underwent genetic testing to learn more about why his daughter died in utero.
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Sidney Raz, known for his Life Hacks series, shared that the discovery was made years before it might have been detected due to an abnormality found in the genetic tests done following her death.
The content creator explained that his daughter died in utero at 26 weeks from holoprosencephaly, a birth defect where the brain doesn’t form properly.
Nearly seven months after her death, Raz and his wife Kelsey did the testing to try to determine what might have gone wrong with the pregnancy — only to discover that he had stomach cancer.
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“It was literally just my daughter’s DNA that saved my life and now there can be a path forward,” Sidney says in a video posted April 5 to TikTok.
Kelsey didn’t have any abnormalities in her test results, but Sidney appeared to share the same deletion of CTNNA1 as their daughter.
“Because of that deletion, in recent years, it has been seen to cause certain types of cancer — specifically stomach cancer,” Sidney says.
“I went in for the endoscopy and today I found out that I have stomach cancer.”
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Raz noted that of the 36 biopsies they sent in to be tested, only one of them showed signs of cancer.
“The really effed up part of it is that I probably have to lose my stomach,” he says, acknowledging that while that “sucks” he would “give more than one of my stomachs away to stay here.”
Raz added that his doctor told him that if the cancer hadn’t been caught as early as it was, he would “be back within three years at stage 3 or 4 cancer. So I might not have a stomach, but I’ll be here in three to four years.”
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Raz has been sharing updates, where he has talked about everything from the kind of cancer he has to the emotions he’s feeling that day.
In one post, he confirmed that he would be getting his stomach removed on Friday.
However, in a new video shared on Monday, captioned “cancer staging update,” the influencer revealed that after getting a second opinion, Raz was told he could keep his stomach and wait to see what happens.
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“So I’m basically a ticking time bomb,” he says, then adds, “and I need to remove my stomach anyway.
“But I don’t have to right now so the stomach removal has been put on hold.”
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