Fitness profile and former elite swimmer Elin Kjos has passed away from lung cancer, her family announced on Instagram. “How she took on this challenge. With courage, strength and love for life and those around her,” they write.
It was on Wednesday that Elin Kjo’s family announced the sad news of her passing. In a post on Instagram they write:
“Last night our beloved Elin fell asleep to the tunes of Eva Cassidy. The disease escalated quickly in the final stages and the body could not take it anymore. How she took on this challenge. With courage, strength and love for life and those around her. You are outstanding, our beloved Elin.”
The post continues: “The last two days passed peacefully and she was being held by the family. We love her forever and the loss is bottomless. I know many of you are now grieving with us and let’s do it together here. At the same time, we ask you to let us grieve in peace. Finally, we ask you to do exactly what Elin did every day: Live! Here and now. Don’t wait another second.”
Was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2020
Earlier this year, Elin visited Renée’s bridge. She then told me that she had been suffering from a persistent cough for some years before she was told that she had lung cancer. In the spring of 2020, a tumor was found in her right lung, and then everything changed:
“They did tests on my gene mutation and then they saw that it was incurable. There was nothing they could do, so in May 2020 they registered me as a palliative patient, i.e. life-prolonging,” she tells the program. “They thought I wouldn’t live out the year.”
According to The evening paper it looked brighter for a period: two years after the diagnosis, the news came that the cancer was “dormant”, and that one of the largest metastases (also called daughter tumors) had shrunk. But tragically, the cancer later spread to the bone.
“Began to live in a different way”
After the cancer announcement, Elin gained a new outlook on life.
“If I’m not going to live until I’m a hundred years old, then I still want to live and feel as well as possible and be as happy as possible while I’m alive. That’s when I started to turn my focus to the fact that the only thing I know is here and now,” she says in Renée’s bridge.
She continues: “When I started to shift my focus, a lot of this worry and fear that you carry around all the time disappeared. It made me start living in a different way. I wasn’t fighting an illness, I was alive. And that’s such a big difference. For I was not alive before, I have understood now.”
