Maddy Baloy Had Only 1 Year to Live After Cancer Diagnosis — and Chose Joy: 'Didn’t Let Anything Defy Her’
"She’s done so many amazing things and she touched so many lives," Maddy Baloy's fiancé tells PEOPLE in this week's issue
Courtesy Baloy Family
Even surrounded by loved ones in hospice care at her Florida home, Maddy Baloy craved adventure. “She kept saying, ‘I want to go outside and go swimming,’ ” her fiancé Louis Risher tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. It was how Baloy had approached each day from the time she was diagnosed with terminal cancer in February 2023, to the end of her life on May 2, 2024.
In just over one year, the 26 year old gained the admiration and support of millions who followed her journey on TikTok as she worked her way through a 19-item bucket list of skills to learn, people to meet and places to go. “Maddy did not let anything defy her,” Risher, 27, says. “She was always just about love.”
Baloy first began dealing with stomach issues during the summer of 2022, spending over a year cutting out different foods from her diet. “I was really trying to solve it for myself," she told PEOPLE back in March. But on Feb. 22, 2023, when the then-kindergarten teacher at Shores Acres Elementary School in St. Petersburg began vomiting repeatedly and experiencing sensory issues in the middle of class, she decided to head to urgent care.
Courtesy of Maddy Baloy
What resulted was an emergency biopsy surgery and devastating news: Baloy was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic stomach cancer and had, at best, an estimated five years to live.
“Immediately I thought, ‘Okay, my life is now so completely different,' " she said.
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Soon Baloy found the strength to process and accept the heartbreaking reality that the future she had envisioned for herself — living in a home filled with the noise of children and dogs — was not in the cards. “My mind shifted,” she said. “I was like, ‘I am going to get every ounce of life that I can out of this. There’s nothing I can do — I may as well have some fun.’ ”
Courtesy Baloy Family
That fun included checking off the lofty bucket list item of meeting Gordon Ramsay, a lifelong goal.
“He's just the coolest man in the world,” Baloy told PEOPLE after Ramsay flew her and her family out to Miami for the opening of his new restaurant Lucky Cat in February. “He gave us the VIP A-list, celebrity experience."
Baloy was in the midst of checking off another item on her list — “See everything I can” — by taking a dream trip to Japan with her fiancé when her health took a turn for the worse in March. On the second to last day of the trip, she "started having really severe cramps in her stomach and her back,” Risher says.
Well enough to fly from Tokyo to Tampa, Baloy went straight to the hospital when she return back home, where her condition deteriorated. “She was fighting so hard and just said, ‘I’m tired of being in pain, Mama,’ " recalls Carissa Talmage, Baloy’s mother. "It was then that we knew we needed to go to hospice."
Courtesy Baloy Family
Early in the morning on May 2, 2024, Maddy died, surrounded by her fiancé and family. While Risher says Baloy completed “everything that she really wanted to do on her bucket list,” there was one item remaining: her dream fall wedding. Still, in her final days, “we made the decision between us that we’re married for life,” Risher says.
Reflecting on Baloy’s last year of life Risher adds, “During the last year — her cancer journey — she’s done so many amazing things and she touched so many lives. It’s been an incredible journey.”
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