HojuSara, Beloved YouTube Personality, Dead at 31

Sara Holmes, a popular Australian YouTube star who blogged about her life in South Korea, died on Sept. 1. She was 31. Holmes, who used the name “HojuSara” on social media, died after a six-month battle with leukemia.

Holmes was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in May, just after she arrived back in Brisbane, Australia with her fiance, Hyun, reports The Daily Mail. It was her first trip back to her native country in two years because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. Hyun announced Holmes’ death on Sept. 5 with posts on her social media accounts. “Since goodbyes are sad, let’s say Bbyong instead. Bbyong,” Hyun wrote in the first post on Holmes’ Instagram page since July 30.

Hyun also shared a heartbreaking 40-minute video on Holmes’ YouTube page, where she had over 350,000 subscribers. In the video, he included a message Holmes recorded for her fans just before her death. “If you’re listening to this, I love you all,” Holmes told her fans. “If you’re listening to this, I’m watching you all from the sky.”

“I wanted to make it to the end. I will be taking care of all of you. Every time you see something beautiful, that will be me. This is not the end,” Holmes’ message continued. “I’m still fighting. I am fighting. I wanted to spend more precious time with all of you. I wanted to send you all a message, but this came faster than I expected. I have made so many good friends. I guess I have used up all of my luck. I have no regrets. I wanted to spend more time with you, but I will be watching over you.”

Holmes’ doctors told her she only had a week to live in August, Hyun said. However, she held on and lived until Sept. 1. “She really was a kind person,” Hyun said, with tears streaming down his cheeks. “In my whole life, it was the first time I had ever met such a kind person.”

When Holmes and Hyun went to Australia in May, they first stayed at a friend’s house in Sydney. There, she began feeling strange back pains for the first time. After she went to Brisbane to visit her parents, she was taken to an emergency room for tests. She was first told her heart was healthy, she was just experiencing “muscle pains,” and she could go home to rest. However, she fainted on her way out of the hospital. She was rushed to another hospital, where she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, notes the Daily Mail.

Holmes was shocked by the diagnosis because she lived a healthy lifestyle, she said in her video announcing her diagnosis. “Whatever you do, even if you live healthily, you can just get it for no reason,” she said in a May 14 video. “Actually, only 1,000 people are diagnosed with it a year in Australia. So it turns out I’m one of those people this year. I can only laugh. Honestly, I’ve already cried a lot, so if you don’t laugh, you just cry more. Right?”

Acute myeloid leukemia begins in the bone marrow and often quickly moves to the blood, according to the American Cancer Society. “It can sometimes spread to other parts of the body including the lymph nodes, liver, spleen, central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), and testicles,” the ACS notes. “Most often, AML develops from cells that would turn into white blood cells (other than lymphocytes), but sometimes AML develops in other types of blood-forming cells.” There are about 20,050 new cases of AML diagnosed each year, mostly in adults. It is rare, with only about 1% of all cancers being AML cases.