In 2015, Thomas was diagnosed with sarcomatoid carcinoma, a combination of carcinoma, which affects the skin and tissues that line the internal organs, and sarcoma, a cancer of the connective tissue found in bone, fat and cartilage.
In the time after the diagnosis, Thomas underwent multiple surgeries to his back and leg to remove the tumors, but as the masses continued to spread throughout his body, he turned to YouTube to raise awareness about the disease under his channel name, PeeWeeToms.
“I don’t know how to deal with it, not very well, anyway,” Thomas, from the U.K., said in his first vlog in January. “I’ve done very silly things, and I hope that I can help people on the way to not come into those pitfalls or fall into those kinds of traps when dealing with cancer. It’s a horrible, horrible situation to be in.”
From that very first video, Thomas included a hashtag that would prove to be a phrase he’d hold on to for months to come: “Don’t give up, don’t give in.”
Then, at the beginning of September, Thomas posted a heartbreaking video that revealed the cancer had spread “everywhere” and that he was quickly approaching his final days.
“I wasn’t sure I’d win the fight, it doesn’t mean I won’t keep fighting for time,” Thomas said, after reading aloud the devastating news of his latest scan. “But I’m struggling now. I need to make the most of it. I really need to make the most of the time I got left, with the ones that I love and everyone.”
Thomas set out to live up to that promise, and in just a week’s time, he revealed he’d married his girlfriend, Becca, in a wedding that was planned in less than a day.
But two weeks after the ceremony, a visibly exhausted Thomas revealed he was in hospice care. Days later on September 24, he posted his final video from his bed.
“It’s very painful now, it’s upsetting as well because there are things I want to do that I will never be able to do now,” he said. “It’s horrible to explain to the outside world how you feel, it’s almost impossible to show it… I’m just so weak, so weak.”
On September 28, in a video to his YouTube page, Thomas’ wife and family announced he had passed away earlier that afternoon. Through their grief, they vowed to continue to share his story in the hopes of helping other cancer patients and their families.
“It’s difficult to get the right words out at the minute. Between us, we want to keep encouraging you to keep going, whatever place you’re at,” Thomas’ father said in the video. “That’s what Dan would do and that’s what he did. If he’s got a legacy, I’d say that’s probably it. Just keep going, do what you can do and enjoy every minute of it because he did.”
This article originally appeared on PEOPLE