Two months after announcing her breast cancer diagnosis, former “America’s Next Top Model” contestant Jael Strauss has died.
She was 34 years old.
The “ANTM” Cycle 8 model died in hospice on Tuesday around 11 a.m. after her health started to decline drastically Monday night, a source told TMZ. Strauss was reportedly unconscious for a few days.
Strauss announced she was discontinuing chemotherapy in October, saying that she had been diagnosed with “incurable” stage 4 breast cancer.
“I was gonna write some long thing but some of you guys deserve to know, On October 2nd I was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer,” she wrote on Facebook on Oct. 4. “It has aggressively spread throughout my body and is incurable.”
She continued, “With treatment it may prolong my life longer than the ‘few months’ doctors said I could make it. I don’t want to die. I need another one of those miracles that I got back in 2013.”
In November, Strauss posted again about her first night in hospice, writing, “So many things I never knew about life. Or death. So many things.”
“The one blessing was that we were able to show her how loved she was before she passed,” Strauss’ family said in a statement to TMZ. “She brought so much light to people.”
The model was making strides to fight for her life and announced in August that she was officially five years sober after struggling with an addiction to crystal meth.
“Today I have 5 years sober. Good God!” she wrote on social media at the time. “I know a few things to be true: Miracles are real, Recovery is possible for everyone no matter how far gone you think you are, We are never too broken to be put back together, Service work feels better than the greatest high, Sobriety makes you weirder not normal and I’d be dead if it weren’t for all the love and forgiveness I’ve been showered with by my friends and family.”