Influencer Sidney Raz had the perfect response after facing backlash for sharing his stomach cancer diagnosis online.
“If I can disappoint my family, I can disappoint people on the internet,” Raz told Net Influencer on Monday, May 12, about how he’s handling negative comments.
Raz (real name Sidney Raskind) was diagnosed with stomach cancer earlier this year and has kept his followers up-to-date on his health battle.
“This was a time when I truly just felt like I owned it completely,” Raz told the outlet. “This was mine. And no one can tell me how to do it.”
Sidney, who rose to fame in 2019 and has amassed more than 1 million followers on Instagram, noted that he’s navigating how to incorporate his cancer journey into his usual content.
“I’m finding out about seahorses. That’s crazy. Seahorses don’t have stomachs,” he shared.
“Didn’t know that before I had stomach cancer.”
After Raz’s wife Kelsey suffered a pregnancy loss at 26 weeks gestation in September 2024, the pair underwent genetic testing and uncovered his diagnosis. (The couple welcomed daughter Zelda in 2023.)
“We lost the baby to holoprosencephaly,” Raz explained via Instagram in March, referring to a rare birth defect that occurs when “a baby’s brain ordinarily separates into two sections,” per Child Neurology Foundation.
“It was found that [his baby] had a deletion … so we did genetic testing on me and Kelsey didn’t have that deletion but I did have that deletion,” he continued. “And because of that deletion, in recent years, it has been seen to cause certain types of cancer, specifically stomach cancer. I scheduled an endoscopy and … today I found out that I have stomach cancer.”
Raz explained that there were “no symptoms” before his diagnosis. “It was literally just my daughter’s DNA that saved my life,” he said in an April Instagram video. “And now there can be a path forward.”
While Raz shared via TikTok video that he would “probably” need to have his stomach removed in April, he later shared that the surgery had been postponed.
“Since last week’s positive ultrasound I’ve had a lot of conversations about pushing my surgery. Since they [sic] ultrasound came back so good, there wasn’t a need to remove my stomach ASAP,” he wrote later that month. “And honestly my family and I are not mentally, physically, emotionally, or nutritionally ready. So now it [is] in the summer. Woooooooo?”
