Hot News: Diem Brown, reality star who chronicled cancer battle, dies at 32

Diem Brown, the reality star who candidly and extensively wrote about her battle with ovarian cancer, died on Friday morning at age 32.

You might know Brown from MTV's 'Real World/Road Rules' challenge in 2006, or other MTV 'Challenge' specials throughout the years. She was open about her illness from the beginning, going through chemotherapy after she was first diagnosed at age 23. The cancer returned for a second time in 2012. This past summer, after collapsing on the set of MTV's 'The Challenge,' she confirmed that she had also been diagnosed with colon cancer.

It's also possible that you know Brown purely from her blog at People.com, where she wrote frequently about her treatments, in addition to deeply personal posts about subjects including her desire to have children one day.

'I am scared about my ovarian cancer journey, but I know everything happens for a reason,' she wrote in one of earlier posts. Last month, she told the magazine, 'I want people to know the fight is worth it. And that's something that's so important to me.'

Brown's candor about her struggle recalled the original mission of the once-groundbreaking 'Real World' series: 'To find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.' While later seasons wallowed in manufactured drama, Brown's story hearkened back to those early cast members who worked through messy, real-life issues on camera, in some cases become the public face of an important issue.

For example, Pedro Zamora, the openly gay housemate in the third season 'Real World: San Francisco' who publicly chronicled his battle with AIDS. To this day, people still consider his story to be the one that catapulted the show into a pop culture mainstay. As the Daily Beast put it, 'The young, gay, HIV-positive man. . . living with the disease on camera, humanly, day-to-day with housemates, helped shape a young generation's more inclusive view of homosexuality and living with HIV and AIDs.'

Zamora died in 1994 at age 22 shortly after the show wrapped filming. At the time, President Bill Clinton paid tribute to him and thanked him for bringing such an important topic into the public eye. 'Not everyone was comfortable even talking about it, and he changed everything, at least for younger people,' Clinton said.

In 2004, 'Real World: San Diego' housemate Frankie Abernathy talked about her battle with cystic fibrosis; she died three years later at age 25.

In the years since, 'The Real World' cast has become increasingly drama-filled and forgettable - but people like Brown used their fame to raise awareness.

That was also what Brown said she hoped to achieve through her blog on People.com. 'By sharing my story,' she wrote in one of her earlier posts, 'I hope others going through similar paths can see that they too are 'normal' and that help is out there!'

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