Famous Twitch streamer and Fortnite gamer Ninja reveals cancer diagnosis

WEB DESK: Famous Twitch streamer and professional gamer Ninja revealed he was recently diagnosed with skin cancer on Wednesday.

In a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Ninja shared that he discovered a mole on his foot that, upon visit to a doctor, turned out to be cancerous.

Despite the diagnosis, the Twitch streamer remained optimistic. “It came back as melanoma, but [the doctors] are optimistic that we caught it in the early stages”, he wrote.

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Richard Tyler Blevins, whose gamer tag is Ninja, has 19 million followers on the live video-streaming website Twitch. The 32-year-old shot to stardom while playing Fortnite live on the platform in the 2010s.

In 2019, the streamer signed a contract with Microsoft to stream exclusively on their video-streaming platform called Mixer. However, he ended up shifting back to Twitch following the Mixer’s shutdown in 2020 after a failed venture.

Skin cancer, also known as melanoma, is a type of cancer that develolps in a person’s skin cells. The cancer usually develops on parts of body most exposed to the sun.

However, in more extreme cases, the cancer can even develop on parts of body not exposed to the sun such as under feet or inside nails. The cancer type can develop inside a human eye.

As per reports, more than 97,000 cases of melanoma were reported in 2023 alone. However, with early diagnosis and proper treatment, the survival rate of patients is over 93 per cent.