YouTube Star Melanie Ham Dead at 36 After Cancer Battle

In December 2018, doctors discovered a mass on Melanie’s left kidney. She had surgery the following week, she explained in a 2019 blog post, in which she had her left kidney, the mass and two lymph nodes removed. Afterwards, she learned the tumor was benign. 

But in August 2020, she shared with her followers that the mass had returned. “So, it was a benign mass,” she said in a YouTube video at the time, “but now it’s not.” As she wrote in a blog post, the “tumor came back in multiple locations, very rapidly.”

Melanie said she had an Epithelioid Angiomyolipoma or PEComa, which she described as part of the “Sarcoma family of cancers” and “very very rare.” She continued to keep fans updated on her surgeries and cancer treatment. Her last health update post was in October 2021.

“Back in May you might remember I had a surgery. The goal was to be tumor free and the procedure was a success at the hands of my amazing surgeons,” she wrote at the time. “We were very happy with the outcome…. but only 5 weeks after surgery I had new symptoms and after a scan we discovered that the cancer spread and had become very aggressive… again.”