Đan Thy didn’t drink water. For three years she swapped it for bubble tea, about five cups a day.
She’s 23. And she has leukaemia.
The Vietnamese beauty creator, who has 11.3 million TikTok followers and 611,000 on Instagram, shared the diagnosis in a video on 18 May.
She said treatment would interrupt her posting schedule and she wanted her audience to know why.
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She also hoped, she added, that her story might push other young people to take their health more seriously.
Three years, no water
Đan lives in Ho Chi Minh City and was unsparing about the routine she’d built alongside her career.
Bedtime was 6 or 7am. Showers happened in the middle of the night. Plain water barely featured.
In its place came five cups of bubble tea a day, plus matcha lattes and other sugary drinks.
“I thought, as I don’t smoke or drink alcohol, that my body would be fine,” she said.
She’d been exhausted for months. Then she got seriously ill.
Doctors at the Blood Transfusion and Hematology Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City confirmed leukaemia.
She hasn’t disclosed the type or stage.
What she’s known for
Đan built her platform on dramatic makeup transformations and has been open about the work she’s had done.
Around 15 cosmetic procedures since her mid-teens. Jaw reduction. Cheekbone shaving. Nose jobs. Fillers.
The video announcing her diagnosis now has more than 24 million views on TikTok and several hundred thousand supportive comments under it.
“I would stay up until dawn, sleep through the day, and practically never touch regular fresh water,” she added, saying she now regrets ignoring the warning signs.
She urged her followers not to dismiss small health signals, and not to assume that being young was the same as being safe.
What doctors actually say
Here’s the part Đan’s video doesn’t lean into. Sleep deprivation and sugary drinks aren’t recognised causes of leukaemia.
Doctors have pushed back on that framing even as the story spreads.
Lifestyle factors matter for plenty of conditions. This isn’t one of them.
That hasn’t stopped the conversation in Vietnam, where young content creators have been talking about their own hours, habits and hydration since the video landed.
Why it matters for creators
The lesson for the rest of the creator economy isn’t really a medical one.
It’s about the cost of building an audience on a schedule that doesn’t include sleep, meals, or anything close to a normal day.
Đan’s story might not be a cautionary tale about bubble tea.
It is one about the conditions a lot of full-time creators are quietly working in.
Burnout content has been everywhere on TikTok and YouTube for the past year, with creators going public about exhaustion, anxiety and routines that aren’t sustainable.
Đan’s video has slotted into that conversation whether she meant it to or not.
She’s paused work to start intensive chemotherapy.
Whether she returns to the same posting schedule, or returns at all, she hasn’t said.
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