Newspaper Article
Michael Cuccione, youngest of the five-member spoof boy band
2gether, has died at 16 in Vancouver from compplications from
Hodgkin's disease.
"His lungs just gave out," his uncle also named Michaek Cuccione,
told MTV news on Tuesday. "We weren't really expecting it."
Cuccione, died Saturday in his hometown, eight days after his
birthday, of complications from respiratory failure.
The teen played Jason (QT) McKnight on the MTV show 2gether,
who poked fun at the boy band craze. His character had a
fictional ilness, "biliary thrombosis," but Cuccione really had
Hodgkin's disease as a child and had been treated for five months
with chemotherapy.
Cuccione's uncle said the cancer had not returned in five years,
but past treatments had left him unable to move air properly
through his lungs. A problem with his diaphragm developes and he
was forces to tape episodes of 2gether while carrying a portable
oxygen machine.
The singer-actor set up a cancer research foundation, cowrote a
book with his grand-mother and appeared on Baywatch as a cancer
victim.
